With Sword And Head Held High
by Ushmushmeifa
Summary: A demon, a sword, and a 500 year old grudge come back to haunt Professor McGonagall. Complete. [Highlander – Harry Potter crossover]
1. Chapter 1

**Summary:** A demon, a sword, and a 500 year old grudge comes back to haunt Professor McGonagall. Highlander – Harry Potter crossover. Canon: Harry Potter post-_Order of the Phoenix_, Highlander post-_Archangel_. Highlander characters and concepts belong to Panzer/Davis Productions; Harry Potter's world belongs to JK Rowling.

* * *

The day began much the same as every other day at Hogwarts. The staff went about their business, the ghosts chattered amongst themselves, the more active miscreants amongst the students lost themselves House points and gained detentions, and the Daily Prophet was filled with meaningless gossip. Still, Snape felt strangely uneasy. His Dark Mark was neither more nor less quiescent than usual; even the Dark Lord seemed to have settled into a steady pattern for the autumn.

There was absolutely nothing going on. Perhaps that was the cause for his disquiet: it was rare now that a day went exactly as expected. This one was no exception, though the Potions Master was forced to abide until dinner to discover what new and interesting information would dictate another change in the course of his life.

The dinner progressed ordinarily enough, until a soft chime sounded at the staff table. A small pop followed, coinciding with the appearance of a long metal object in front of Professor McGonagall. It lay there: solid, unmoving. The staff who noticed the sudden addition to their table – and there were few, occupied as they were with their own conversations and concerns – looked askance at McGonagall, who for her part stared at the thing in surprise. Leaning forward around the oblivious form of this year's Defence professor, Snape identified the object as a sword, heavy in make. It was, if he was not mistaken, an antique Scottish claymore.

Dumbledore raised white eyebrows at his Deputy Headmistress. "Minerva?" he enquired gently. "A delivery you were expecting?"

McGonagall started, and looked up to meet the clear blue gaze. Her stern features seemed to have aged dramatically with the appearance of the object. Her face was ashen. "No, Albus, I was not. It is a private matter, though." She swallowed heavily, and Snape noted the moisture gathering at the corners of her eyes. "If you would excuse me, I have some family business to attend to." So saying, McGonagall rose, grasped the sword by its worn hilt, and left the hall. A small dark stain slashed across the table where it had rested.

The noise level in the hall dimmed momentarily as those who noticed the Transfiguration professor's departure paused in their conversations. It was a small distraction, however, and most of the students returned to their meals. Three of the older students sitting at the red and gold table watched for a moment longer, concern in their expressions for their Head of House, but they too eventually turned to more immediate matters.

Dumbledore looked down the table and met Snape's gaze. The message in the twinkling cerulean irises was clear. Snape nodded slightly and turned back to his meal. Thirty minutes later, his plate cleared, he left the great hall.

He found McGonagall behind the locked door of her office, sitting in her chair, the sword resting across her lap. The light seemed dim, for all that the sun shone brightly through rare gaps in the clouds beyond the leaded windows. Wet trails glistened on her cheeks, tracing a line to the damp high collars of her robes. She glanced up as he entered, and turned her head away. Snape said nothing, standing in a silence that allowed her privacy and offered support. At last, she sighed heavily.

Snape stirred, as if the soft noise was a cue for him to speak. "There is blood on the edge," he said quietly. He was not normally a patient man, nor a sympathetic one, but he recognized deep grief and he acted accordingly.

"It is his," McGonagall replied. Her voice was shaky, lacking the tight control she had displayed in front of the students.

"His?"

"Meriadoc. My brother." Snape did not speak. She continued, "This sword was also his. It is a family heirloom. Upon the death of the Clan chieftain, it portkeys to the successor."

"Ah." There was little Snape could say to that. He had not remembered that his colleague had had a brother. The news of his death, delivered in such an abrupt manner, had hit her hard. The Order had boasted two McGonagalls once, he remembered now, in the previous war. In that direction lay a question he feared to ask, but did so nonetheless. "The Dark Lord?"

"No." Her response was immediate; she did not acknowledge Snape's momentary relief. "We were not close, Meriadoc and I. He was in the Americas researching Clan history. I had not seen him for years. I don't know the exact details of what he was working on, but he was close to completion. His reports will be in the Clan vault."

Snape's brow furrowed. McGonagall, who normally talked as clearly and straightforwardly as she taught, was now revealing information in tiny snippets that made no sense without the proper context. "What history does the McGonagall Clan claim in the Americas? I was under the impression that the McGonagalls have never left Scotland."

McGonagall canted her head in agreement. "The destiny of this sword." She gripped the claymore lightly. "The search for it has claimed many of us."

It was a strange destiny that led its wielder to death; for all the stories and legends, and the histories written in dense prose mouldering deep within the depths of private libraries, such destinies were rare. The wizarding community of the Americas, so far as Snape knew, was not given to dark lords and the bloody conflicts that occurred within the more hidebound pureblood societies. "Will you be leaving us to chase this destiny?"

Hesitating, McGonagall met his gaze. Her eyes were red-rimmed and dark with sorrow. He could see clearly the thoughts that crossed her expression: fear, worry for the school, grief, the burden of Clan honour that demanded retribution for her slain brother and, at the last, determination. "No," she said. "It is in the Americas. It will not touch us here, and Albus needs us all in these times."

Snape nodded, satisfied.

* * *

But she was wrong, or had reason to doubt her assessment, for it was not long before three of her Gryffindors were to be found discussing their Head of House in a secluded corner of the library. It was a neat corner, far away from Madam Pince and wandering students, dusty and filled with obscure and trite books that no sane person, not even a Ravenclaw, would wish to waste time reading. It was of course Hermione Granger who led them to the library, and the two boys who found such a place useless for studying and perfect for hidden conversations. They could talk here without fear of attracting the attention of the formidable Library mistress.

"She's been acting odd lately," the dark haired boy said. "I heard a second year Hufflepuff say she nearly bit his head off for doing a spell wrong."

"She's not eating," the bushy haired girl continued. "She looks like she hasn't been sleeping. And she's always got that sword with her."

"It's scary," the red haired boy spoke in turn. "She jumps at the slightest noise, and she's always touching the thing. I've seen her on the Astronomy tower too, always looking at the Forest. It's odd."

"What were you doing on the tower, Ron?" Harry asked, the spark of a mischievous grin curling his lips.

Ron flushed red. "Never you mind." He hurried on with the original topic before his friends could get sidetracked. "She gets an odd look at dinner too, and she's always watching Harry. D'you reckon she might be polyjuiced?'

The three looked horrified at the thought.

After a moment, though, Harry shook his head. "No. She's not drinking anything, not like Barty Crouch did. It's something else. I reckon it's that sword. Did you see her face when it appeared last month?"

"Like someone had died," Hermione said. Her eyes widened. "Do you think maybe someone did?"

"But then why's she looking at Harry like that? And she carries the sword around with her everywhere. I heard one of the Slytherins say she saw dried blood on it."

Another short contemplative silence followed.

Ron spoke slowly. "Do you think maybe we should do something? Find out what's wrong, or something. We don't want her going after Harry."

"Ron!" Hermione exclaimed. "Professor McGonagall wouldn't do that!"

"No, but . . . if she's not herself . . . And the school year isn't complete until at least _one_ of the professors tries to kill Harry."

Harry just looked tired. He didn't bother trying to refute the comment that had proven itself all too true since the beginning of his schooling. "She _is_ acting odd lately. Maybe we should find out what's going on."

"No."

The three students jumped as the low silky voice emanated from the shadows. Professor Snape stepped out of them, looking exactly like the vampire some of the lower years thought he was. Pale-faced, with strands of dark hair hanging in front of black eyes, he was a fearsome sight even for the three most used to him appearing like this.

"Professor Snape!" Hermione said. Her cheeks were red. "We were just–"

"Conspiring against a professor. Your own Head of House, no less," Snape interrupted. There was a dark, dry humour in his voice, but his eyes lacked the malice that would burn in them during class. The three children who had once regarded him as evil incarnate and their greatest tormentor had come to see him in a different light during their close association with the Order of the Phoenix. Older, less prone to seeing everything in terms of absolutes, they had come to a small understanding of the role he played in the war that intruded on their lives and the many risks he took to protect them all, especially the son of his childhood nemesis. He would never be their favourite professor, but they respected him. Their behaviour reflected this maturing perception. Consequently, when not playing a public charade, he treated them with greater tolerance. It was a change in relations that suited them all.

It did not, however, decrease his effectiveness as their professor – and oft times disciplinarian. The three looked abashed.

"We're just worried about Professor McGonagall," Harry explained. A true Gryffindor, he did nothing tentatively, but he was nevertheless somewhat leery of doing anything that might cause the previous rivalry to flare again. He liked not fighting against his professor, who almost always won in any case. "Is she alright, sir?"

"You did not think to ask her yourself, Mr Potter?"

"We thought it wouldn't be polite – and anyway, if she's a polyjuiced Death Eater or something, we didn't want to let her know that we know."

A dark sardonic eyebrow rose. "After seven years you have learnt the meaning of tact and caution. Thank Merlin for small mercies." There was a pause while the dark haired boy flushed again, keeping silent. "Be assured that your Head of House is not using polyjuice. Nor is she under any malicious influence – even mine." The three students winced at that, but did not protest under his knowing gaze. "Miss Granger is correct: a member of Professor McGonagall's family has indeed died. Do continue to demonstrate your newfound talent for discretion and refrain from confronting her with your suspicions."

"Oh," Hermione breathed, dismayed. "I hadn't really – I mean–"

"Are you sure that's all?" Ron interrupted. "She keeps _looking_ at Harry odd."

Black eyes pinned Ron to his chair. He squirmed, but met the considering gaze adamantly. Snape turned his focus on Harry for a moment. He said, "I would imagine that her bother's demise has come as a great shock. Given Mr Potter's propensity for involvement in dangerous situations, she no doubt wishes to ensure that he avoids the same fate."

"It – it isn't anything to do with Voldemort?" persisted Harry. Worried green eyes looked up at Snape beseechingly.

"I am not aware of any such connection," Snape replied, grudging, as if reluctant to provide even that small reassurance when he could not be absolutely certain. "Mr Potter, Mr Weasley, Miss Granger, do concentrate on your studies and do not repeat our discussion where others might hear. Professor McGonagall will not appreciate your interference in her personal affairs." A final glare swept over them all before he pivoted and retreated beyond the bookshelves, black robes billowing behind him.

The three Gryffindors sat in silence for several minutes after his departure. Almost as one, they relaxed postures that had instinctively stiffened in the presence of their demanding professor.

"Greasy git," Ron breathed. It was an automatic response, lacking any real feeling.

Hermione's reproving glare was also automatic, an act repeated so many times it had lost meaning. "What are we going to do?"

"What Snape said," Harry replied. "He's right: McGonagall doesn't need us tripping over her feet. Let's just go easy on her for the moment, okay? She's got enough problems already."

"We don't cause her problems," Ron objected.

"No?" asked Hermione pointedly. "Who was it got detention today for not finishing their Transfigurations assignment?"

"But–"

"Just do it, already. And Harry, _try_ not to get into a fight with the Defence professor this year, alright?"

"Hey!" Harry objected, mirth dancing in his eyes at her mock-serious tone. "It's not like I ask them to try to kill me."

"Yes, Harry, whatever you say." The condescension in her voice was ruined by the giggle that immediately followed. The serious discussion degenerated into a series of jokes, if of a somewhat dark nature, and the puzzle of McGonagall's behaviour was resolved for the moment. The offending Transfigurations assignment was eventually finished before they left the library.

It was after curfew by this time, not an unusual occurrence for these three. Hermione and Ron were immune to Filch's wanderings, but Harry was neither headgirl nor prefect – much to his private relief. The three had no desire to explain themselves to Madam Pince should she find them, and so determined to use Harry's Map and invisibility cloak to return to their common room.

"Harry." The red haired boy was staring at the old tattered parchment, his brow creased.

"Yeah?" Busy pulling out his invisibility cloak, Harry did not look up.

"What's that?" Ron pointed to a dot on the Marauder's Map. It was stationary, sitting in one of the many offices, but definitely belonged to someone or something – and it wasn't labelled.

"That's odd." Harry frowned, coming to stare at the nameless point. "I've never seen the Map make a mistake before." He tapped the Map with his wand and muttered a few words. Captions swirled across the parchment surface. "What's a nameless person doing in the Muggle Studies professor's office? Who _is_ the Muggle Studies professor, anyway?"

"Adam Green," the voice of the headgirl broke in. Hermione came to stand behind them. "Honestly, Harry, he was introduced at the beginning of the year. What's the matter?"

"There's something in Green's office that isn't labelled," Harry explained, showing her. "It's strange."

"I've never seen that before." Hermione frowned in perplexity. "Do you think the Marauders made a mistake?"

"If they did, it isn't one I've seen before."

"You don't think it's anything to do with You-know-who, do you?" Ron asked. He seemed to be asking that a lot lately; the lack of activity from that source had left him increasingly anxious that something big was building.

"With our luck, yes." Harry laughed suddenly. "But in the _Muggle_ Studies office? That's hardly likely."

"Let's go find out," Hermione said abruptly.

Mock surprise widened Ron's eyes. "Why, 'mione, what did you do to the rule-abiding headgirl?"

"Git." She tossed her bushy hair over her shoulder and turned to the dark haired boy with an air of impatience. "Well, Harry? Come on."

Minutes later, having navigated the dangers of poltergeists and caretakers with the ease of long experience and the aid of the Map, the three stood hidden underneath the invisibility cloak, facing the plain door of the Muggle Studies office. Harry checked the Map; the nameless point was still there. Suddenly it started moving, leaving what the Gryffindors assumed was the desk and heading towards the door. They backed away until they were flat against the wall opposite the door.

It opened, spilling warm yellow light out into the dark corridor. A tall, lean man stood in the doorway, scanning the hallway slowly with piercing green-gold eyes. His dark hair was shockingly short for a grown wizard, similar to what the average muggle-born students wore. The face was young and ordinary, its most striking feature the patrician nose. Black jeans and an oversized sweater completed the image of a wholly muggle man, even to the lack of a wand in his hand. He stood there, surveying the dark corridor, for what seemed to be a long time. The Gryffindors held still beneath the cloak, hardly daring to breathe. At last, seemingly satisfied, he stepped back and closed the door, leaving them blinking in the abrupt departure of light.

By unstated consensus they waited until they had reached the Gryffindor common room before speaking.

"Wild," Ron muttered. "How'd he know we were there?"

"Must've heard us outside." Harry shrugged dismissively. "He didn't see us, anyway. That settles it: he's definitely the Muggle Studies professor. But why doesn't Green's name show up on the Map?"

Hermione looked thoughtful. "Why wouldn't a name show up? Either he knows about the Map and figured out a way to fool it – something even the Marauders didn't manage – or he isn't really there, or . . ."

"He _is_ there. Even ghosts show up on the Map. Or what?"

"Or . . . I don't know. Maybe he doesn't _have_ a name."

Harry shook his head. "That's stupid. Of course he has a name – Adam Green."

"But if that isn't his real name, it wouldn't show up," Ron pointed out. "Polyjuice can't fool it. Maybe a fake name wouldn't either. But why wouldn't he have a name?"

The three students sat in silence before the roaring fireplace.

"The _Muggle Studies_ professor," Harry muttered in disgust. "It makes a change from DADA, at least."

"We don't _know_ that he's a Death Eater," Hermione pointed out.

Ron rolled his eyes. "Of course not. A nameless professor, new this year, at Hogwarts? Of _course_ he's got nothing to do with Harry."

With that, they bade each other good night and left to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

It was not long before Snape confirmed the changes that the Golden Trio had claimed. Watching his colleague, whom he had largely ignored in favour of keeping an eye on the less well-known staff members, he realised something: she was deathly afraid. The gifted Transfigurations professor, veteran of two wars, kept up a reasonable façade in public that broke down the moment she was alone.

The sword was with her wherever she went: resting on her desk in her classroom or office, or installed into a charmed sheath that revealed only the hilt when she was elsewhere. She gripped it often, as if to reassure herself of its presence. Her gaze would drift to the deep shadows in Hogwart's corridors or the recessed doorways, as if she expected to find something there looking back at her. It was her activity atop the Astronomy tower that was the most worrisome. While Snape noted that it _did_ decrease the number of students who used it for clandestine meetings, consequently increasing the number he found while patrolling the hallways, it did not escape his notice that she looked out over Hogwarts as if she were a guard watching for an enemy. One solitary tower guard, standing on alert over the Forbidden Forest. But Hagrid, with his jovial nature and desire for effusive chatter with all, even the discouraging and grim Potions Master, had not mentioned any strange happenings in the Forest. It was quiet, or as quiet as it could ever get.

A day came when Snape woke to find McGonagall more strained – and, oddly, resigned – than even the last few weeks had warranted. It was this last that concerned him, for it seemed to him that she had been hoping that something would not come to pass, and that it had. When she did not appear for her seventh year class, he decided to approach her again. It was the complaints of his Slytherins that spurred him on, though he did not fail to notice the concern and pleading glances of the Gryffindor trio when no one else was watching.

The door to her quarters was unlocked. Frowning, Snape stepped inside and looked around. Nothing had changed since the last time he had entered McGonagall's rooms, years ago though that had been. The professor herself stood beside an oak desk, stern and proper as was her habit. She seemed not to have noticed him. Her face was in profile to Snape; he followed her gaze to the claymore resting on the large desk.

"Professor McGonagall."

She did not respond. Snape studied her expression with suspicion.

"Minerva. You have been carrying that sword with you all week, even to your classes. You are beginning to frighten your precious Gryffindors." There was a bite in his words, just enough to catch her attention. Rare was the day that McGonagall could not rouse herself to defend her House.

She turned slowly to face him. "I am tired, Severus. Don't bait me." And indeed, her eyes were lined with dark shadows. Her voice had lost the iron that held her students to discipline. She had not slept in days. Snape was familiar enough with that state in himself to recognize it in her. "I never told you the history of that sword."

The usual sarcastic response came to his lips and left unspoken. He did not like how old she sounded, as if she were a frail Muggle with all her years and their reduced tolerance for the passing of time. "No."

Her gaze was focussed inward, far away from his reach; she spoke slowly, without the crispness he was accustomed to. "It was forged by my ancestor long ago. The times were turbulent; there was much strife between the Highland clans. They were Muggle folk, for the most part, superstitious and without any real understanding of magic. They told many stories – folk stories and ghost stories to frighten their audience – some true and others not. There is one tale that touches on the McGonagalls in particular, though it was not ours to begin."

McGonagall was silent for a moment. Telling the story seemed to bolster her, and her voice became firm. "The MacLeods and the Frasiers, two strong Highland clans, were bitter rivals, fighting over land and cattle." She ignored the open disgust and contempt in Snape's expression. "There was a battle one day, over a cattle raid as I recall, neither unusual nor noteworthy, save for one thing. A MacLeod boy was killed. Just a boy, eighteen years old, if that, in his very first battle. The next day he rose and walked the streets of his village as if nothing had happened. There was not a mark on him, not even the wound that had ended his life, and he smiled and talked exactly as the boy had, but the boy was dead. A Demon had taken over the body.

"The MacLeods drove the Demon from the village, but it was not the end of it. The Demon haunted the moors, stealing food, chasing travellers. Word spread, and it was hunted by clan war parties, though it was rarely seen."

"Demons, Minerva?" Snape's voice was uncharacteristically gentle.

She seemed not to notice his tone. "A mere Muggle story, perhaps," McGonagall replied, "save that it was caught and killed with a sword thrust through the heart. The next day the body rose and ran away from the camp. It was seen to fall from a great cliff and break every bone in its body, only to rise again whole. It was burned with fire, and ignored it. In short, the Demon could not be killed. The hunting parties lost interest after a time as it learned to hide from them in the rugged moors. The Demon dwindled into folktale, until it resurfaced again almost fifty years later. This time, however, the hunters started dying. The Demon attacked all that sought it with a vengeful brutality.

"My ancestor forged that sword to find and defeat the Demon of the MacLeods. He died trying to wield it, as did his son and his grandson and many more of his heirs. It is not enough simply to use this sword; the Demon is powerful, and only the best swordsmen had a hope of defeating it. Even magic was not much of an aid. The claymore is a family heirloom. With it comes an oath to finish what my ancestor started."

Snape regarded the sword for a moment in silence. "How is that relevant now?"

McGonagall seemed to cave in on herself. She sat at her table, leaning against the chair's backrest for support. "The pommel stone is clouded. The sword pulls me to the Forest. The Demon is here," she said. "Now. Somewhere near Hogwarts. It has come to find me."

Watching her closely, Snape moved to a cupboard behind her and took out a decanter of firewhiskey. He poured a generous serving into a crystal cup and placed it on the desk in front of her. "Is it a danger to the school?"

"I don't know." McGonagall picked up the cup and turned it from side to side, watching the refraction of light on its faceted surface. "The Demon has been traced to many of the worst Muggle battles over the years. It is no stranger to bloodshed. Perhaps, yes, but more likely it has come only for me. Certainly it has been fatal to any McGonagall that has seen it."

"Then," Snape said very deliberately, "we must make certain you do not see it."

McGonagall looked up at him and smiled. A glint of humour returned to her eyes. "I didn't know you cared, Severus."

"Really, Minerva," said Snape disgustedly. "Blatant favouritism to your Gryffindors is one thing. A Demon bent on killing you is quite another. Have you told Albus?"

She sighed. "No, and I don't want you to, either. This is a personal family matter. Albus shouldn't be involved. He has so much to deal with right now, with young Mr Potter and the Ministry."

"Ah, yes. The Golden Boy." Snape was heartened to see McGonagall's frown. He smirked at her as he picked up the claymore and cradled it in his arms. "Very well. I will leave the esteemed Headmaster out of this."

A trace of alarm entered her eyes. "Severus, what are you planning?"

"I will find your Demon, of course. Perhaps a little persuasion will convince it that Hogwarts is dangerous even for one such as it."

"No, Severus. The Demon will kill you if you cross it."

"And that is different from what may happen to me every day?" Snape waved his hand and said airily, "You need not worry on my account. Sleep, Minerva. I will inform you of my progress." He gave a shallow bow and swept out of her rooms.

Despite his agreement to keep the matter discrete, Snape was not at all surprised when the Headmaster approached him before embarking on his necessary, but altogether taxing, mission to the Ministry.

"I will be gone the whole week, if not longer," said Dumbledore gravely. "You are sure there is nothing that requires my attention?"

Snape met his gaze. "Nothing," he replied in all seriousness. "We will survive in your absence."

"I do hope so," murmured Dumbledore, running a piece of string through his hands with uncustomary worry. "What is he doing?"

There was no need for Snape to ask who - he already knew. "Researching Salazar Slytherin's history," he replied with the barest of shrugs. "It occupies much of his time these days; if there is more, I am not privy to the knowledge. I do not know what will come of it."

Dumbledore nodded absentmindedly. The information was not new to him. "If it were not for Fudge–"

"Yes, Albus. You know we will contact you should the need arise."

"Of course, of course." The return of the twinkle to his eyes was just enough warning for Snape. "And do try to keep young Mr Potter out of trouble."

"Don't I always?" Snape said in disgust.

Dumbledore chuckled. "Indeed you do. And, Severus–" he looked hard at the younger man, "you will take care of Minerva?"

Snape nodded, hardly surprised at the Headmaster's perception, and Dumbledore seemed satisfied, for he turned and activated the portkey, leaving the Potions Master alone in the cluttered office.

* * *

The three inseparable Gryffindors had commandeered a table outside and sat nursing butterbeers. Harry and Ron picked through the selection of sweets they had bought, while Hermione sorted through a small stack of books. She ignored the chatter that switched from Quidditch to sweets and back again with a speed to dizzy the idle listener. It was only when the boys fell silent that she looked up, wondering what had caught their attention. She followed their gazes.

A man was walking through Hogsmeade, black Muggle coat flaring around him with each long stride. Black jeans and an oversized sweater completed an image that was wholly Muggle. Hermione blinked. It was a sight so unexpected that it took her a moment to process; she had never before seen an adult wizard in Hogsmeade who could have fit so perfectly into Muggle London. Even so, he had a manner about him that was entirely unremarkable; there was little to draw the attention of anyone other than three students who had grown – justifiably – paranoid of even the slightest oddities.

The man faltered as he came closer. He glanced about quickly. Hermione had the impression of green-gold eyes beneath short dark hair before the dispassionate gaze swept beyond her. Seeming to find what he was looking for, he slowly moved forward until he was standing near their table, close enough that Hermione could have reached out and touched the black-dyed wool. His gaze never left that of the man who approached from the other direction, tugging on the slipknot that kept the dirty beige trench coat closed. Worn sneakers made no sound at all on the cobblestones as he came to a halt a few metres away.

Hermione exchanged glances with Harry and Ron. _Two_ wizards who not only attempted to look like Muggles, but actually achieved it, in Hogsmeade? Harry's eyes were wary as he gripped his wand beneath the table. Too many attempts on his life made him suspicious of anything unusual. _Constant vigilance _had become more than just the creed of an old Auror. Both boys seemed intensely interested in Honeyduke's finest; Hermione focussed her eyes on the book in front of her, daring only to glance at the two men standing close by out of the corner of her eyes.

The two Muggle-dressed men looked at each other in silence, faces unreadable. The unshaven, unkempt one with shaggy blond hair and piercing storm-scudded eyes had his hand in his coat, as if holding a wand not yet drawn from its holster. The other had his hands very deliberately down and slightly away from his body.

The dark-haired one spoke first. "Well, this is a surprise. I didn't expect to see you here, Highlander." His voice was congenial, with an undercurrent of caution.

The blond grunted.

Trying again, the dark-haired one that Hermione was beginning to think looked quite familiar said, "I was about to get a drink. Care to join me? No Glenmorangie, I'm afraid, but they do a great firewhiskey."

The blond's eyes narrowed at the offer. "I only drink with friends." His voice was startling, light and husky with suspicion, a mixture of accents Hermione couldn't even begin to identify.

"Ah." Rebuffed, the friendly dark-clothed man appeared to think a great deal before cautiously putting forward his next question. "Are you . . . _looking_ for someone?"

"Yes."

He stiffened at that, his expression shuttering. "Me?"

"What if I am?"

He sighed, sharply. "Look, MacLeod, I don't have a problem with you. I don't _want_ a problem with you." He was beginning to sound a little anxious. "Duncan wouldn't be too pleased with me either way it went. Besides, Ramirez was a friend of mine."

The other growled. "Stay away from my kinsman, old man."

"That's up to Duncan, isn't it?" The man, who really did not look any older than the blond, hesitated, and then shook his head wearily. "I don't want to fight you, MacLeod. Just tell me your business isn't with me and I'll get out of your way."

The silence was so long and fraught with tension that Hermione found herself holding her breath. She forced herself to suck in air and let it out, breathing normally, afraid that the two men would notice the eavesdropping table. Not that they could help eavesdropping, as close as they were. They stared at each other, motionless, evaluating – what, Hermione did not know.

"My business isn't with you," the blond said at last. "Stay out of my way." He took a few steps back, then turned and walked away.

The dark-haired man stared after him with a worried expression, paler beneath his already pale skin. Muttering something that sounded like a particularly vicious curse, he started back towards Hogwarts.

"Merlin!" Ron breathed as soon as the two were out of sight. "What was _that_ about? Looked like they were going to duel right here in the street."

"I don't know," Harry said slowly. "And who were they? That first bloke looked familiar."

"He's the Muggle Studies professor," Hermione said suddenly, realizing where she had seen his face before, though it had been dark and somewhat obscured by the invisibility cloak. "Adam Green. I've never seen the other one before, though."

"Think it has anything to do with You-know-who?" Ron asked.

Harry chewed contemplatively on the leg of a chocolate frog.

"Really, Ron. Not everything has to do with dark wizards." Exasperated, Hermione closed her book and organised them into a neat pile.

"No, but everything around Harry usually does," Ron pointed out.

There wasn't anything Hermione could say to that. A few minutes later they finished their butterbeers and headed back to Hogwarts, still discussing the strange meeting they had witnessed. They met only one person on the way, going towards Hogsmeade, and they took no notice of him until he abruptly turned around and stared at them.

"Did you say _MacLeod_?" Snape hissed.

The Gryffindors exchanged startled glances. "Yes, professor?" Hermione hazarded.

Hooded black eyes regarded them with the intensity of a bird of prey. "Mr Potter. Detention, my office, 7pm."

"What!" exclaimed Harry. "But I haven't done anything!"

Ron and Hermione both protested loudly. "Sir, it's Hogsmeade weekend. You can't give detention! What's Harry done?"

Snape's gaze flickered, watching something approach from behind. He glared at them. "Ten points for arguing. Do I need to give you detention as well, Miss Granger, Mr Weasley?"

"No, sir," Ron said smartly. He glared at Snape, his face nearly as red as his freckles. "We'll just be going now, sir." He waited until they had nearly passed out of earshot before muttering, "Greasy git."

Snape stiffened, but did not turn, instead heading further down the hill to greet a small group of his Slytherins.

"It's alright, Ron," Harry said quietly. Hurt lingered in his eyes.

"No, it isn't," Hermione rebuked him. "What's happened to set him off? He hasn't done anything like that since fifth year."

Harry squared his shoulders. "I'll find out tonight, won't I?"

"Yeah, mate. We're not letting you go to the greasy git alone, though." Ron looked at him with sympathy. Hermione nodded her agreement.

"You don't have to," Harry said, but his expression was filled with gratitude.

And so it was that three Gryffindors knocked on the Potions Master's door. He opened it abruptly as was his standard procedure, gazed at them for a moment, and muttered, "I might have known. Very well, Mr Weasley, Miss Granger, you may both join Mr Potter in his detention." He turned, heavy black robes swirling around him, and preceded them into his office.

The students jumped when the door slammed shut behind them, the lock clicking and the brief haze of Silencing wards covering it. They turned to face their professor.

Harry cleared his throat. "Sir? May I ask what I've done to earn a detention?"

The forbidding professor looked at their drawn wands with affront and thinly veiled amusement. "Idiot children." There was a slight twitch at the corners of his mouth that might have become a smile on another man. Flushing a little, the three students pocketed their wands, though Ron did so with clear reluctance. "Mr Potter, you were discussing a man named MacLeod. Tell me the circumstances of your meeting."

Puzzled, but willing nonetheless, Harry complied. Snape looked deep in thought after he had done. His black eyes were fully lidded and he said nothing for a long time. His students shifted, but knew better than to speak.

"I need to see your memories," Snape said at last.

Hermione gasped and Ron frowned.

The dark Potions Master scowled at them. "You know how to Occlude," he told Harry. "Push the memories of your meeting to the front of your mind." He drew his wand and looked at Harry expectantly.

"Can't Harry just use a pensieve?" Hermione objected, adding a belated, "sir."

"He could," Snape said agreeably enough, "If I had the time and the resources required. I do not."

The dark haired boy stared at him, memories of his fifth year rushing through his thoughts. He had applied himself to his studies ferociously after that, after Sirius had fallen due to Harry's negligence. He knew it was not his fault, that Sirius himself had had a large part to do with his failure to see through Voldemort's manipulations, but the pain was still there. Harry knew how to Occlude now and did it so often that it was almost as natural as breathing. But it took a level of trust to let Snape anywhere near his mind again.

A level of trust he never thought to have for the dark Potions Master.

Oddly enough, Snape seemed to know what he was thinking. The man simply waited, neither forcing Harry nor goading him with biting words. Harry had the feeling that this was his way of asking for permission. This, more than his curiosity, more than his concern about _why_ Snape wanted to know more about a chance-met stranger, decided him.

"Alright," Harry said. Taking a deep breath, he raised his eyes to meet Snape's.

"_Legilimens_."

The pressure of the spell against his mind was almost gentle compared to what his lessons had been like. Snape did not push or probe, accepting just the memories that Harry chose to present. When he withdrew, he spent a moment in quiet contemplation. Harry let out a heavy breath that contained equal parts of relief and surprise that it had not been more painful. Then he looked at Snape semi-apologetically.

His friends looked at him with concern, but when he waved them off, they turned to the older man. "Professor," Hermione began tentatively, "Do you know any spells that might conceal a person's name?"

His head snapped up, lank black locks hanging in front of his eyes. "Why do you ask?" he questioned sharply.

Hermione frowned, looking like she regretted saying anything at all. "Well, say we were trying to figure out someone's name, and the spell works on everyone else, even if they're polyjuiced, but on one person it comes up blank every time–"

"Show me the Map," Snape ordered, cutting her off.

The three exchanged alarmed looks. "What map?" Ron asked, screwing up his face in a parody of innocence.

"Idiot children." This time Snape sounded exasperated. He hissed, "Do you think I do not know of its existence? I have known for far longer than you." He sighed, and faint regret creased his brow. "Mr Potter, I assure you I do not intend to confiscate it. The item belonged to your father, and you have few enough of those." He paused, and his voice turned cool. "However frivolous the purpose for which it was made, it has proven useful in the past. Now that you are using it responsibly and not for the express purpose of breaking school rules I have no objection to you keeping it."

Harry stared at him wide-eyed. That was the closest to an apology he had ever heard from Snape, a white flag, olive branch and handshake all rolled into one. Snape was a Slytherin to his core; he never did anything so bluntly, and Harry recognised the signs of an alliance offered, no doubt much more obvious than was Snape's usual actions in order to accommodate Gryffindor sensibilities. Gone was the resentment that Snape had shown him from the very first moment his name was announced to the Sorting Hat; gone was the attitude of a man who held him accountable for his father's sins. Snape looked at him, and though the black gaze was impervious to Harry's study, it offered a degree of respect that Harry had never before seen there – or in the eyes of any adult, for that matter. Snape did not look at him as if he were a child.

Filled with a strange anticipation, hoping desperately that he was not about to be proven wrong in his regard for the Death Eater turned spy, Harry pulled the Map out of his pocket.

He tapped the parchment with his wand. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." His friends looked doubtful, but they kept quiet, and he was grateful that they trusted his judgement enough for this.

Snape's lip curled at the spoken key, but he refrained from comment as he took the Map from Harry. Thorough and careful, he scanned the parchment, quickly finding the representative dot Hermione had circumspectly been referring to. He passed his wand over the parchment, muttering several spells in succession. None changed the curious blank area where a name should have appeared. He scowled. "You are certain that is Professor Green?"

"Yes, sir," Harry replied, somehow not at all surprised that Snape knew exactly who should be in that office. "We checked."

"Curious." He handed the Map back to Harry. The boy had to stop himself from snatching it, despite the level of trust he had shown in handing it over in the first place, and Snape glanced at him with impatience. "Miss Granger, there is no such spell as you describe. The identity and locality spells placed on the Map are tied into Hogwart's enchantments. It would take a powerful force to disrupt those, and the Headmaster would certainly have noticed."

"Then what does it mean? How can Professor Green not have a name?" asked Hermione.

"Two things, Miss Granger. First, he may have no true name that he recognises – it is theoretically possible, albeit very unlikely, that such a circumstance might occur. Simple memory loss is not sufficient to break the bonds between a soul and its self identity to such a degree that that identity is masked from Hogwarts. The other possibility is that he is not even remotely human."

"Not human?" Ron echoed. "But he's the _Muggle Studies_ professor! You can't _get_ more ordinary than that here!"

Snape looked disgusted. Harry thought some of it was aimed at himself, for Snape had plainly never looked twice at Green. He said softly, "Misdirection and misinformation, Mr Weasley. Those are the ingredients of any deceit. A Slytherin learns that quickly."

"I wish the Headmaster was here," Hermione said plaintively. "Do you know when he'll be back, professor?"

"Not for some time, I believe. He is caught up in London." He straightened. "Go back to your tower now. Avoid Green. If you see MacLeod again, _leave_. Tell me immediately, or Professor McGonagall. No one else."

The three students stared at him wide-eyed.

"If you have never paid attention in my classes, pay attention to this: _do not_ approach MacLeod or Green."

"Does this have to do with Voldemort?" Harry asked.

Snape did not wince at the name. His expression was intent. "Not to my knowledge. It is quite possibly worse. But – rare as it is – it has _nothing_ to do with you, Mr Potter. Keep it that way, or you will find yourself set against an enemy far deadlier than the Dark Lord."

"What's this about, professor?" Hermione dared to ask.

"Scottish folktales, Miss Granger. Highland demons and ghost stories." Snape's eyes hooded; they knew they would get no further information. "Go back to your tower."

"Uh, sir? What about Harry's detention?" Ron's face was screwed up with confusion.

Snape sighed. Harry caught a hint of words under his breath, involving _Gryffindors_ and _Slytherin_. "Idiot child. Go."

They left.


	3. Chapter 3

Snape entered the office and was met with a flurry of activity. Raising an eyebrow, he watched the young professor wearing disgustingly Muggle clothes stack books into a large suitcase. He supposed the costume was appropriate for the man's job, if severely lacking in taste, and he thought it was taking Muggle Studies too far. He had overheard students – no Slytherins, of course; it was far too dangerous for any of his House to attend a class celebrating Muggles – complaining that no magic was allowed in the classes, and speculation that the professor was a Squib. Watching him shove more belongings into the suitcase by hand, Snape wondered if it might be true despite Ministry laws on appropriate teachers.

"Going somewhere?"

The man whirled in a gratifying display of surprise. Snape's eyes narrowed as the man's hand flew to a pocket, then just as quickly dropped back to his side. From the hang of cloth, whatever was in that pocket was _not_ a wand.

"My, my. Jumpy today, aren't we, Professor Green?" Snape drawled. "One might think you were up to something."

Green stared back at him, wariness rapidly fading through relief into unconcern. It made Snape frown to see himself so easily dismissed. "Yes, I am," Green said. "Going somewhere, that is."

"In the middle of term, no less. What _would_ the Headmaster say to this desertion?" Snape supposed he was overdoing it a little; if he weren't careful, he would begin to sound like Lucius Malfoy.

"He said that it's fine and I should come back when I'm free again." Green's tone was casual.

"He did not!" Snape snapped, taking two long steps forward to tower over the other man. "The Headmaster has been unavailable for quite some time. The truth, if you please."

Green took a cautious step back. "Alright, so I haven't told him yet, but I'm planning to. Just as soon as I have a free moment to write."

"Where are you going?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but something came up. It's a family thing." Turning, he grabbed another stack of books and packed them away. Snape caught a glimpse of the titles: they were in a language he was relatively certain was Ancient Greek. "If you'll excuse me, I really am in a hurry. Did you come here for a reason?"

"Yes." Snape pulled the McGonagall claymore out of his robes.

Green went very still. His eyes darted to the coat draped over a chair nearby. Evidently deciding it was too far away, he straightened and faced Snape fully. "What do you want?" His voice had gone flat.

"Don't be a fool," Snape sneered. "If I wanted to kill you, I would hex you." The man said nothing, but he relaxed fractionally. "I understand you have made a study of Muggle legends," Snape continued when the green-gold irises focussed on his face.

"I'm a historian," Green said, shrugging. "Both here and in the Muggle world."

"How well do you know Scotland?"

"Reasonably." Green's gaze returned to the sword. "What do you want to know?"

"Tell me about the Demon of the MacLeods."

"The-" The man's already pale face whitened. Green-gold eyes flickered up to assess Snape's expression. "I don't know anything about that." He moved towards the coat, but aborted the gesture when Snape raised the sword slightly.

"Yet I am certain you were talking to someone you called MacLeod in Hogsmeade earlier today."

"Do you make it a habit to spy on your colleagues?" Green asked drily.

It was a true enough statement, in a way that Green could not know. Snape dismissed it without changing expression. "The students do, and they are indiscreet with the information they learn."

"So you spy on your students," Green concluded with a sigh. "What are you intending to do with that thing?"

"This _thing_," Snape said with wry emphasis, "was forged to find and destroy the Demon of the MacLeods."

Green's eyes widened and he flinched back, as if the sword was suddenly something very dangerous. "So that's why-" he stopped, mouth snapping shut on the unguarded words. "You came to find out what I know about the MacLeods, right?" At Snape's silent nod, he continued, "I can't tell you much, but I _can_ tell you what to do with that. Put it away. Lock it up somewhere secret and make sure no one _ever_ touches it."

Snape's eyes narrowed at the sudden vehemence in the other's tone.

"No, I'm serious. Look, it's called the Demon of the MacLeods, right? Well, the MacLeods deal with their own. They won't appreciate you barging in on this one, trust me on that. It really would be better for you if you destroyed that sword."

"Tell me what you know about the Demon," Snape said again.

"Nothing," Green replied. His eyes widened as Snape took another step forward. "I know the legend," he elaborated quickly. "A boy killed in battle, alive the next day. That's all I know, I swear. It's a four hundred and fifty year old obscure Muggle tale."

"Five hundred," Snape corrected.

"Five hundred," Green agreed, unsettled.

"Your MacLeod friend will know more."

"No doubt," Green muttered. "But, uh, he's not the most forthcoming person. He won't tell you anything, and he certainly won't thank me for pointing him out to you. In fact, if you want to keep your head where it is, you'll leave him alone." Green froze momentarily as if realising what he had just said.

"A threat, Professor Green?" Snape purred in his silkiest voice. "I do not respond well to threats."

Green's eyes widened in alarm. "It's a Muggle saying!" he exclaimed. "I just mean . . . keep away from him, alright? Now, if you'll excuse me, Professor Snape, I really must be going." Green snapped the locks shut on his trunks, and then summoned a house-elf with a snap of his fingers and a few muttered words. The instructions for the house-elf were issued in a language Snape had never heard before. Nevertheless, the creature seemed to understand, for it bowed without the usual protestations of eager obedience, and disappeared with the trunks.

Green picked up his coat and slipped it on with a well practiced movement. "Good day," he said pointedly, and stalked out the door.

Snape stared after him for a long moment. "Interesting," he murmured. He was now certain that there was far more to the Muggle Studies professor than he had originally suspected – and more than he had suspected mere minutes ago. It rankled the Death Eater turned spy that he had completely overlooked his unassuming young colleague; it was small consolation that he doubted the man had anything to do with the war or the Dark Lord.

But he had everything to do with McGonagall and the Demon.

And his reactions, normal as they had seemed, were somehow off. As intimidated as he had appeared, Green had not been nearly as afraid of Snape as he had acted. He had been far too self-assured, the green-gold eyes continuously assessing the situation. The man had been constantly surprised and thoroughly unsettled, but not truly nervous. If Snape had not been so skilled at deception himself, he might have accepted the act at face value. As it was . . . casting several Disillusionment and Silencing charms on himself, Snape followed the professor. One thing was clear: something had put Green on the run.

They headed directly for the Forbidden Forest, Snape a good twenty metres behind. He scowled as Green stepped under the eaves, and sped up; he did not want to lose his quarry under the thick foliage. Green continued at a brisk pace, unaware of his shadow, eyes constantly scanning the rapidly darkening forest.

He stopped abruptly at the edge of a clearing and cursed quietly with a vehemence that startled Snape. Slowly, cautiously, he reached into his coat and drew out a broadsword, holding it in a grip that spoke of casual competence. Snape was beyond startled now; his wand was out and ready.

Green stepped into the clearing, wariness in every line of his body. His eyes flickered over every inch of the forest; Snape held himself absolutely still, hardly daring to breathe. Even so, Green gazed in his direction a split second longer before continuing to scan the forest.

A shadow detached itself from the trees to their right. Soundless thought it was, Green turned towards the intruder immediately.

"MacLeod," he said, sounding resigned.

The scruffy young man who circled to meet him looked completely ordinary, save for the intent gleam in his eyes and the long sliver of keen metal in his hand. The swords were such strange and archaic weapons to wield in the wizarding world, or even the Muggle one, that Snape was acutely conscious of the claymore wrapped within his own robes. He made no move towards it, not even when he felt the heat of the hilt through layers of cloth; the two men circling each other like hungry predators had given no indication that they were aware of his presence, and after a single glance at the competence with which they held their weapons, Snape harboured no illusions that he could best either in a fight with swords alone. He doubted very much he could take them on with his wand.

"Methos," MacLeod said. There was a wealth of emotion in the spoken name, suspicion foremost. "I told you to stay out of my way." His tone was pure danger, ensconced in an accent that was part Scottish, part French, and a multitude of others.

"I am," Green retorted. "And don't pretend you didn't follow me here."

MacLeod grunted. "What are you doing here?"

"It's a school. I taught. Now I'm leaving."

"_What are you doing here?"_

Green was quiet for a second. Then he said, "I felt it best to keep out of your kinsman's way for awhile. He was a little on edge, last I saw him. If I had any idea you even knew about the wand-wavers and would be coming here, I would have chosen a different vacation spot. What are _you_ doing here?"

The man gazed at him for a long moment, considering his reply. "Crazy wizard came at me with a sword, spouting some nonsense about stopping me from joining the Dark Lord. Thought I'd come see what he was on about."

Snape suppressed an exclamation.

"If that's all, I'll be going, then," Green said with false cheer. "I don't want to get in your way."

MacLeod's eyes narrowed. "You've seen it," he accused.

"Seen what?" The question was asked with simple innocence that would have placated the most suspicious audience. It was not, apparently, enough for MacLeod.

If Snape had thought the two dangerous before, it was nothing to the menace that now filled the air. He had been to Death Eater revels that promised less violence. MacLeod's eyes went flat and vicious.

"Don't play games with me, old man. You came here for that damned sword."

"No!" Voice edged with a very real alarm, Green sought to keep an even distance between them, retreating in a circle around the clearing. "It was pointed out to me, but I never touched it. I never even knew it existed before tonight." He continued backing away from MacLeod, matching him step for step. "I'm not fool enough to take a blade keyed in to your blood, Highlander. I know damned well you'd come hunting me." His eyes narrowed with speculation. "How did that happen, anyway? I never took you for the type to collect wand-waving enemies."

Ignoring the comment, MacLeod said, "You know it exists. That's enough."

Green sighed. "MacLeod – Connor. I don't want to fight you. I don't want anything to do with the bloody sword. Besides, Duncan would come hunting for whoever takes your sorry hide."

There was a long silence. MacLeod chuckled softly, the sound rough and grating in the silence of the clearing. "You'd better believe it." His eyes narrowed, though he lowered his sword again, snapping it down one leg in what appeared to be a ready position. "Challenge my kinsman, and I _will_ come for you. Where's McGonagall?"

Blinking at the sudden change of topic, Green said, "Excuse me?"

"The sword belongs to the Clan McGonagall. The damnfool McGonagall wizards are as obsessed as the Kurgan was."

"Professor McGonagall teaches in the school," Green replied slowly. Snape repressed the fierce urge to hex the man. It was far too late, and the damage had already been done. "But, MacLeod, she's an old woman. She's hardly going to threaten you."

MacLeod grunted.

Green put more distance between them before sheathing his sword in his coat. "I'd really rather you didn't kill her. She's harmless, and she's good for the students."

"Are you sticking your head in my business, old man?" The threat was clear.

Holding up his hands in a pacifying gesture, Green said, "Not at all. That's why I started packing as soon I saw you in town. I have absolutely no desire to be in the same country as you without Duncan to vouch for me."

"Hiding behind my kinsman's kilt. Always knew you were a coward."

Green's eyes flashed at the insult, but he just shrugged. "I survive. It's what I do. Now, if you're not going to challenge me, I'll be on my way." Green walked to the edge of the clearing. "And MacLeod, just because I don't like to fight, doesn't mean that I can't." Offering a lopsided grin to offset the momentary hardness in his expression, Green turned and disappeared into the Forbidden Forest.

Staring after him, MacLeod muttered, "Always want the last word, eh, Methos?" A thoughtful expression on his face, he sheathed his own sword, the weapon sliding into what Snape thought was either a magically deep pocket or a very elaborately hidden Muggle contraption.

Snape was in a quandary. This was the Demon of the MacLeods, this scruffy, feral man in front of him. He was dangerous without a doubt; the ferocious light in his eyes and the casual elegance with which he had stalked Green, deadly blade in hand, had removed any shadow of doubt from Snape's mind that the Demon could be a threat to Hogwarts. And he was looking for Professor McGonagall, looking with murder in mind.

But the conversation had raised too many questions that needed answering. Voldemort had been mentioned. Snape felt sick to his stomach at the notion that a Demon such as this, a Demon with no compunction against killing, who wizards had tried and failed to kill for almost five hundred years, might join the ranks of the Death Eaters. Should such a creature hunt Harry Potter, Snape had no doubt the child would not stand a chance. Too, there had been the mention of retribution. Snape could not kill this Demon if another, one that Green – Methos – seemed to fear more, came avenging his kinsman's death.

MacLeod's head rose suddenly, snapping to face Hogwarts. Soundlessly he melted back into the trees, disappearing as completely as if he had never been there. After a moment, Snape heard what had warned the Demon away. His lips twisted into a fierce scowl. Foolish children! What were they thinking?

He could not see anything, but the tread of three pairs of feet were clearly audible, as were the hushed whispers in the quiet of the forest.

"Why does it have to be the Forbidden Forest? Why is it always the Forest?" Plaintive, whining: Weasley's voice.

"Green came this way," Potter said. "I've got to find out what he's doing."

Snape didn't wait to hear the third voice. He knew the identity already. "_Accio_ cloak," he hissed, simultaneously releasing the Disillusionment charm and lighting his wand.

The three students appeared as the Invisibility cloak flew into Snape's hand. The children squeaked with surprise, eyes growing wide with horror as they realised who had found them. Snape knew his expression was murderous. They were wandering about the Forest, and a _Demon_ was on the loose! Had he not warned them to stay away from Green? He drew a deep breath and began detailing their punishment.

* * *

"Minerva."

The stern Transfigurations professor looked up, her lips immediately relaxing from the thin line that marking second year papers had drawn them into. McGonagall had recovered some of her equilibrium; were he not so accomplished in studying those people around him, he might have taken her façade at face value. But she still seemed weary, as if her doom had already fallen upon her, and she was merely waiting for reality to accept inevitability.

"Severus," she replied, inquiring. "Is there something you need?"

"Yes. Information." Waiting until she had set down her quill and given him her full attention, Snape continued, "You are certain there is only the one Demon?"

She frowned, and sighed. "My brother only talked of one, though that one went under many different names. I did not make a study of the Demon; I have only now obtained the notes written by my brother and ancestors on the subject." McGonagall gestured to a neat pile sitting on the corner of her desk. Some of the parchment was new; others were tattered and browned with age or dirt, held together with rough bits of cord. She paused, and dread defined her gaze, though she was not ruled by it. "You are implying there may be more than one."

Snape did not like this, not at all. He understood the implications of the information he had to offer, and knew that she too would understand.

But he was accustomed to bearing bad news. "I have seen a man who is called Connor MacLeod. He wields a sword; a Japanese katana, I believe, though I am not an expert in the field of ancient weaponry. During the conversation I overheard, he referred often to a kinsman he named Duncan."

McGonagall stood abruptly, turning away from her desk as if she needed space and air. She stared at Snape, understanding bringing dismay to her features. "_Conchobar_ and _Donnchaidh_," she said faintly. "Those are the two oldest names for the Demon. "Connor and Duncan. There are two, then."

They stood in silence.

"I do not understand how this knowledge has escaped the Clan chieftains for five hundred years," murmured McGonagall.

"Perhaps," Snape replied with a slight sneer, "because they did not stop to gather more information before rushing their target."

"No doubt." She looked aghast. "Have they been fighting two Demons all this time?"

"I believe there are more than two," Snape said, almost gently. "Green is much more than he appears. He knows both MacLeod Demons; the Map of the Marauders," his lips twisted into a grimace, "reacts oddly to him."

"You do not mean Professor Green?" McGonagall said sharply. His nod was all the confirmation she needed. "This is . . . becoming a problem."

"Perhaps not," Snape disagreed. "Green has left Hogwarts in something of a hurry. He appears to be wary of the MacLeod Demon. Duncan – or Donnchaidh, if you prefer – seems to be absent. We need only be concerned with Conchobar."

McGonagall laughed sharply. "Only with Conchobar," she echoed. With abrupt, jerky movements, she gestured to the pile of parchment. "Read the notes, Severus." She sighed. "I had hoped the wards over Hogwarts would provide some protection for the school. But if, as you say, Green is a similar Demon, they will not keep Conchobar out."

Snape hesitated, then drew out the claymore and held it out to her, hilt first. Softly, he said, "You may need this. Be wary, Minerva. The Demon knows you are here."

She did not move for a long moment. When she grasped the sword, her hands did not shake. Her back straightened, and Snape was reminded once again that this woman had fought, and fiercely, against Dark Lords before. "It is not here yet," she noted. Indeed, the pommel stone was clouded, but not yet opaque, and the hilt had cooled. "We have time to discover what should be done."

Snape nodded. He was unable to define the emotions that choked his throat with unaccustomed severity. Worry there was, certainly; regret, and a certain pride for his colleague. None of them showed on his face; he picked up the sheath of notes. "We have time. One thing, at least, is certain: the Demon is not, yet, in league with the Dark Lord. I do not believe the Dark Lord is aware of its existence."

"That is something," McGonagall said.

With a short bow, Snape swept out of the office. He made his way uninterrupted to his own rooms, and settled down to read the notes. The earliest ones were written in the rough Latin of the common clergy of that time; it caused him some irritation, but no hardship, to read.

OoO

_In the Year of our Lord Sixteen Hundred and Twenty Five, on the Fourth day of the Third month, the Smith Angus McGonagall of the Clan McGonagall came to me with the tale of the Demon of the MacLeods, that its word might be preserved for all generations. Thus spake he:_

_There came to the Forge upon Eagle Hill a Clansman of the MacLeods, and he was called Geordan. He carried word that the Demon has arisen again, nigh five score years after the first arising, in the village of Glenfinnan upon the shores of Loch Shiel. The Clan MacLeod is greatly feared of Its curse and, owning no Wizard Smith of their own, came to seek a weapon that might end this curse; no fire burns the Demon, nor sword pierce Its heart, nor rock crush Its body._

_I was sore troubled by this word, and sought the advice of the Witch of Donan Woods. And the Witch was blessed with True Sight, and Saw the truth of the Demon: that It is no Witch, nor Wizard, but a Creature of the Dark. No Death will take It but that given by the Sword, and no Sword but that held by Blood._

_Thus went I to Geordan, and told him what must be done. And Baird son of Geordan returned to me with a MacLeod tartan soaked in Demon's blood, and spake he that Geordan of the MacLeods had fallen to the Demon. And I am wroth, for Geordan was wedded to my sister._

_Forged I then a Claymore with the Blood of the Demon, and warning is set in the pommel of Demon's presence. Now do I seek Confession with the Lord, and tomorrow shall I hunt the Demon of the MacLeods._

OoO

Leaning back into his chair, Snape frowned. The next parchment was written in a somewhat messier and ill-learned hand; he hoped that the author had never seen the gates of Hogwarts, for it spoke badly of the teaching four hundred years ago.

OoO

_In the Year of our Lord Sixteen Hundred and Twenty Five, on the Seventeenth Day of the Fourth Month, I, Maelcoluim McGonagall son of Angus McGonagall of the Clan McGonagall, on the deathbed of Angus McGonagall, swear a Clan Oath. Wheresoever the Demon of the MacLeods be, I will seek It and destroy It, and should I fail, my Heir shall take up the Sword and the Oath. So it is Sworn, so shall it be._

OoO

The emotions carved into the words were strong and primal; Snape noted it, and set it aside. Though his slight curiosity about the beginnings of his colleague's predicament had been answered, he was more concerned with the Demon as it stood today, and why, after over four centuries of such a powerful Oath in existence, no one had been able to destroy the Demon.

He read the journals of the McGonagall chieftains following the trail of the Demon; they spoke of bloodbaths at Culloden and meddlings in the major Muggle upheavals since that period, including the French Revolution, the American Civil War, and the two World Wars. Snape saw that no distinction had been made between Conchobar and Donnchaidh, as if the McGonagalls had not realised there were, in fact, two Demons; the sword was tied to Conchobar's blood, and they ignored all else. They spoke instead of the dragon-headed katana that claimed so many of their predecessors; they spoke of the lightning that the Demon sometimes called, and the fatal wounds that did not kill.

The McGonagalls had chased the Demon through history and over continents with the tenacity that only a binding Oath could enforce. They had lost it many times, for the Demon was skilled at hiding, and such moments that they caught it were brief: as soon as the current McGonagall was sure of their mark, they would attack. None had been successful; all had died.

And none had been so determined as Meriadoc McGonagall in tracking down the Demon. He had been driven, not only by the Oath, but by the certainty that the Dark Lord would return, and fear that this was one more dark creature that would join Voldemort's forces.

OoO

_5th September, 1997_

_After seven years of searching, I have found it. The Demon. It resides in Muggle New York. I thought it strange that the Demon has not interacted with the American Wizards, but perhaps it is not so; the Demon has always had more freedom with Muggles who cannot know its true nature. Even now I have uncovered a twelve year old trail of bodies in this city so bloody that even the Muggle authorities became aware of it, killed with a savagery of magic and steel that not even You-know-who employed. _

_I witnessed one of these fights between the Demon and what I can only presume was another hunter such as myself; the hunter carried a sword, though of Muggle make. Its wounds did not faze the Demon; neither did it hesitate when it decapitated the hunter. The lightning storm that it then unleashed is not something I have seen before. It has the feel of raw magic, and it is severely destructive._

_Two Muggles witnessed the fight. One followed the Demon at a discrete distance, while the other stayed with the body. I believe they were in league with the doomed hunter._

_I see now that the Sword will not be enough against the Demon. It has shown itself to be resistant against magical attacks, but there is little choice. I must incapacitate the Demon before it turns the lightning on me._

_Tomorrow I shall confront it. This journal I am posting tonight. Minerva, may I fulfil the Oath. If I am dead, you will find here the current address of the Demon and all its known lairs. I only pray that I am successful before You-know-who discovers the Demon's existence and recruits it to the war._

OoO

There was a list of addresses and photographs attached to the book, but Snape only glanced cursorily at them; the places were irrelevant, for the Demon had followed the sword to Hogwarts. The photos depicted the man he had seen earlier, just as scruffy, if not more so. He blended perfectly into the Muggle street; only his eyes, alight with watchfulness and some inner fire, marked him as different, if one looked closely. There was little chance to do so, for the images of the Demon kept to the shadows and moved out of the frame at the earliest opportunities.

Snape remembered Meriadoc; he had met the older brother once or twice. He had been tall and athletic, an Auror by training and a Gryffindor at heart. The man was no mean fighter; he had fought and captured Death Eaters in the first war against Voldemort.

And still, despite the man's long experience, he had fallen to the Demon.

They need only be concerned with Conchobar.

Snape wanted to laugh. He scowled instead. Foolish did not begin to describe his earlier statement, spoken with such assuredness.

Conchobar was more than enough to be concerned with.


	4. Chapter 4

The wind gusted through Hogsmeade with force enough to wrap cloaks chokingly tight around the bodies of those foolish enough to be out in the autumn storm. There were not many; it was getting dark now, and too cold by far. Promising the warmth and comfort of heated interiors, the shop fronts were nevertheless almost completely deserted. A scraggly-haired witch here, clutching a desultorily squalling baby to her chest and keeping a tight grip on an older child with her other hand; a few wizards, determinedly going about their business, smothered in long cloaks; and Harry Potter, wandering down the street without aim or purpose.

Hands thrust into his pockets, a woollen jumper pulled over worn jeans, he paid little attention to his path. He was not supposed to be here; it was not a Hogsmeade weekend. It was not a weekend at all.

Hermione and Ron had both been concerned when he left the common room earlier, but Harry had waved them off, mumbling about taking a walk. He had not bothered to tell them that he had meant to walk away from Hogwarts. It was his home, or as near as he was allowed to consider it, and sometimes home seemed too small to hold his restless spirit.

And he was restless. Almost two years had passed since Sirius' death. Longer, really, than he'd had time to spend with his godfather. But Sirius had been the only family he'd cared to claim, and the only family that had cared to claim him. The loss hurt. There were things he could share with his friends, and things that, no matter how close they were, they could never be a part of. Without intent, his feet took him on the long winding road to the Shrieking Shack. It held the place of a shrine to his mind, a place so imbued with the spirit and history of the Marauders that he could sit within its crumbling, rotten walls, and feel some peace.

He had almost reached the gate around the property, bounded on one side by the slumbering forest, when he realised he was not alone. He had barely gotten his wand out of his pocket when the first curse hit him.

The wand went flying from his hand as he was hurled in the opposite direction, landing on his side against a tree with a sharp 'oof'. Before he had gotten his breath back the second curse hit him, and he could no longer move. Harry struggled without effect. In a distant part of his mind he observed how foolish it had been to leave Hogwarts. He should have known better. Really, he should have known better.

A delighted laugh floated through the air. Two shadows detached themselves from the trees. Both were large, one fat. They were cloaked in the dark robes favoured by Death Eaters. One laughed again, and Harry recognised it this time: Goyle senior. Which meant, of course, that the other gorilla was Crabbe.

"Harry Potter," Goyle exclaimed. "What a wonderful surprise. What are you doing out of school, hm?"

He waved his wand, and Harry was freed just enough that he could speak. Glaring at them, he clenched his jaw and kept stubbornly silent.

"This won't do at all," Crabbe said, his thick voice etched with a parody of concern. "Boys who misbehave are punished. _Crucio._"

The pain was awful. Harry writhed – or tried to, the binding curse keeping him immobile – as the nerves fired all through his body. A scream pushed its way past his throat, but he refused to give voice to it, and bit his lip till it bled.

Goyle chimed in then with a curse that Harry dimly heard but did not recognise.

There was no holding back the scream this time.

Harry lost sense of time, of hearing, of sense, of anything but pain. He was aware that he was screaming, was aware that Goyle and Crabbe placed different curses on him by the texture of the pain. The rain started, hard and pelting, and each drop felt like fire to his abused nerves.

He was aware when they stopped. A dimly seen figure hurtled into Goyle. The Death Eater shouted in surprise and anger, and raised his wand against the newcomer. There was a flicker of light reflecting on something long and thin, panicked yells, and an odd kind of gurgling.

Harry waited, but the curses didn't start again.

Blinking, he tried to focus. But his glasses had been knocked off, and what blurred vision he had was swimming alarmingly. A shadow moved over him; he flinched.

"Can you move, kid?"

The voice was neither Crabbe's nor Goyle's. It wasn't anyone's he recognised. He shook his head a little. "B-b-binding hex," he explained. The sound was too faint even for his ears, and he said it again, ignoring the rawness of his throat.

"Right. I'm not a wand-waver, kid. Best I can do is get you to shelter."

The shadow leant over him; Harry felt hands hoisting him up. He cried out at the contact, and the sickening motion of the ground, but the shadow did not falter at all. He lost sense of time again; it seemed that he blinked, and the blurry, ramshackle walls of the Shrieking Shack were around him, and the rain no longer slammed like needles against his skin. He almost relaxed then, but Wormtail knew about the Shack too.

"M-m-my wand." Harry frowned at the stutter in his voice; he couldn't stop it, could barely force the sound out.

"Later, kid. You need help first. I'll be back."

Harry cried out again, but the shadow was gone. He waited; he did not know how long he lay in the hazy darkness, fading in and out of consciousness, but the binding curse had yet to wear off. It seemed mere seconds before the shadow was back.

There were two of them this time, and he flinched again. He did not want to be back on the receiving end of Crabbe and Goyle's curses.

"Can I ask you now why you dragged me out here, Highlander? If I'd known you were coming to the village, I would have left faster."

"Shut it, old man. You were interested in the welfare of your wand-waving students. Do something about this." The voice of the first shadow; Harry relaxed.

"About what?" A shadow moved closer, and the voice turned quiet. "Oh. What happened?"

"Two men in fancy getups. The kid's paralysed."

The shadow leant over him, touching him, turning him gently over. He cried out again, the contact sending agony through badly damaged nerves. "Death Eaters, most likely. What spells did they use?"

"_Crucio_ was the last. Others I don't know. Can you fix him?"

"I think so." The shadow was distant, now, next to the other one. "I'll need his wand and a few potion ingredients."

The voices faded, though he tried hard to listen to them. The shadows moved about him; once he saw Sirius, but he did not respond to his name. Then he saw Remus; the werewolf was not looking at him, but at Sirius, and there was a guarded suspicion in his expression that he had only ever turned on Sirius when the other was playing a prank. Harry cried, then, because Remus looked younger and less worn, and Sirius did not have the taint of Azkaban about him.

It was hours or years later that the binding hex wore off. Harry didn't notice; his limbs would not obey him, and he had no desire to move in any case, not while Sirius and Remus were watching over him. Sirius urged him to drink. The potion was warm and smelled of herbs; it tasted like summer grassland, the coppery texture of lightning, felt like the warmth of his wand spread all over. Sleep stole over him as his muscles relaxed and the pain washed away. He heard Sirius and Remus talking about him again, their voices distant through the soft curtain of consciousness.

"You know who this is, don't you? Harry Potter. The one the wand-wavers are calling their saviour."

"He's just a kid."

"I never said the wand-wavers were very smart. He should be alright now, just needs to sleep it off. I'll be in the village if you need me again, Highlander. So long as it's not for a fight."

Harry did not hear Remus' response, or anything else for a good number of hours. When he woke, it was to see dawn peeking through the crumbling wooden slats. He fumbled with his hand, found his glasses, and put them on. There was no one around, and he felt as whole as ever. He might have thought the previous evening little more than a nightmare, save for the two wands that lay next to his own on the dusty floor, and the blood and mud that had dried onto his clothes. The room smelled like wildflowers and hay; it was summer in the depth of autumn.

With a thoughtful expression Harry pocketed the extra wands, cast a cleaning charm, and made his way back to Hogwarts via the tunnel under the Whomping Willow. He met Ron and Hermione as they were coming down to the common room, yawning and rubbing their eyes.

"Harry!" Ron exclaimed. "You didn't come back last night, did you? Where were you?"

Harry gazed back at him. He felt preternaturally calm, and the taste of summer was like a touch of peace still lingering in his mouth. "With Sirius and Remus," he replied.

Ron and Hermione exchanged puzzled looks. "Harry? What do you mean?"

"They were watching over me. In the Shrieking Shack," he explained. "They were looking after me."

Hermione looked concerned. "Ah, Harry? You do know that Remus is still in Germany, right?" She said nothing about Sirius.

"I know." Harry shrugged. It wasn't important. "He was there, and he was younger, and so was Sirius. He'd never been to Azkaban."

Relieved, Ron clapped him on the shoulder. "It was a dream, mate. Good one, by the sounds of it."

"Not exactly," Harry said thoughtfully. "It ended that way. Death Eaters were there at the beginning, but Remus saved me from them."

His friends looked at each other again. "Just a dream, mate," Ron reiterated.

Harry did not argue. The two extra wands were shoved deep in his pockets, and he did not take them out.

The state of serenity lingered all day, even in his most difficult classes. Snape looked at him askance when he did not rise to the jibes that were customarily dished out in Potions, then gave him detention for not paying attention. Harry scrubbed the second year cauldrons without complaint while Snape gazed at him with piercing eyes.

"Is there something you wish to tell me, Mr Potter?" Snape inquired at last, when Harry showed no signs of speaking.

He shook his head, but after a moment said, "Is Professor Lupin alright?"

Snape frowned. "Why do you ask?"

Wavering, his scourer falling to the side, Harry shrugged. "I saw him last night," he murmured, watching the swirl of soapsuds in the cauldron. "With Sirius."

He heard the chair creak as Snape stood, heard the quiet footfalls come closer. "Look at me. Mr Potter."

Harry shook his head fiercely. He could no longer taste summer in his mouth. The cauldron trapped his gaze; he did not even blink in his desire to keep his eyes fixed downwards.

He heard the breath hiss through Snape's teeth. "As of two nights ago, the werewolf was alive and well," Snape said, tone carefully neutral. "That is the last report he sent. He had not intimated he was in any kind of danger."

Tears threatened; Harry blinked them back, feeling something akin to loss. "It wasn't Sirius, then," he said. "Sirius never would have cut his hair that short, anyway."

"What wasn't Black?"

"Nothing," he muttered, and refused to speak again for the whole detention. Snape did not push him, perhaps realising that Harry was closer to a tantrum of shattered emotions than he had been since the end of fifth year.

The detention was finished in silence. Harry made his way to the library, where he knew Hermione and Ron would be working in their usual spot.

"Did you find anything on MacLeod?" he asked by way of greeting, sliding into an empty chair and pulling out a stack of parchment.

Hermione shook her head; Ron was content to sit back and let her explain the results of their research. "Not much," she replied. "There's nothing in the library about Scottish demons. I owled my sister, though."

"And?" Harry prompted.

She shrugged. "A heap of stories about MacLeods. Not only is it a fairly common Scottish surname, but it's the name of a folk hero, _and_ of the main character in a series of Romances." She blushed faintly; her younger sister had sent along a copy of one Muggle book. The cover had featured a man she commonly imagined as archetypal of 70s porn stars; the language she had seen while flicking through it had been flowery and filled with far too many adjectives – one for _every_ noun – and Hermione could not help but read a few pages in a sort of horrified fascination. Ron had howled with laughter when he saw it, and she really couldn't blame him. Secretly she decided to save it for when Harry needed cheering up.

He was frowning just then, leaning the chair back on the two hind legs as he thought. "So nothing helpful," he concluded. "What about Green?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" Harry cracked his eyes open and looked at her.

"It's like he doesn't exist, mate," Ron said. "No records. I even asked Percy, and the only thing he could come up with was the resume filed with the Hogwarts notices." He paused, and added cautiously, "But it's not like that's unusual, or anything. The Ministry was a shocker for filing in the First War. Half of the Department of Records got destroyed, and the other half is as bad as they come. There's a team of clerks _still_ working on sorting out the mess." Ron grimaced. "Percy sounded positively delighted when he talked about it. I swear it'd be the perfect place for him."

The three Gryffindors exchanged grins. Over the years, Ron's older brother had achieved a precarious balance between serving the Minister and loving his family, but the stress of being pulled in two opposing directions, both of which he strongly believed in, had left him short tempered and unhappy. The other two knew how much Ron wanted Percy away from the Minister, and back as his brother.

With a shake of his head, Harry returned to the matter at hand. "Where does Dumbledore get these people from?" he muttered in disgust. "I bet he doesn't even know who Professor Green is, or anything about him."

"He's a piece of the Shattered God."

The trio twisted in their seats to stare at Luna Lovegood. She gazed back at them dreamily.

After a moment, Harry cleared his throat and attempted to rerail his thoughts. "What?"

"Professor Green is a piece of the Shattered God," the Ravenclaw repeated. "He fell from the stars thousands of years ago, and when He hit the ground He broke into millions of pieces. Now all the pieces wander the world looking for each other."

Ron blinked. "What do they do then?" he asked curiously.

"They try to absorb each other, to make the Shattered God whole again."

Hermione asked the next question before she could stop herself. "How do they do that?"

Luna turned to face her, gaze seeming to focus on some invisible space beyond the Headgirl. "By chopping off their heads." The moonbrained Ravenclaw disappeared beyond the shelves while the Gryffindors sat blinking.

"Right," said Harry. He stared down at his unfinished DADA assignment. "Right," he said again.

The other two nodded.

With a shake of his head, Harry picked up a quill. "That was interesting."

Ron slumped in his chair. "This place is getting too popular. First the Greasy Git, now Loony Luna? It'll be the Ferret next. We need a new lurking spot."

"Ron!" Hermione chided. "Don't talk about them like that. Especially Luna – she's a friend."

"I guess we'll just have to wait until something happens," Harry said thoughtfully. "At least one professor knows about what's going on." There was a pause while the three students silently expressed their opinion of _that_. "DADA essay, anyone?"

It took a massive effort, but they shook off the bemusement brought on by Luna's interruption, and focussed on their school work.


	5. Chapter 5

An owl came from Lupin the next day, thanking him for inquiring about his supply of Wolfsbane, which was quite plentiful, and, incidentally, would he care to mention the real reason for contacting him? Snape did not bother to send back a reply. He set the parchment to burning in his fireplace, as he did all potentially incriminating correspondence from either side.

Mind set to rest, he put aside the question of Harry Potter's puzzling behaviour. It had not repeated itself, and he was willing – for the moment – to consider it a once-off occurrence. He had little choice; a matter of much greater urgency came unexpectedly through the door.

Snape looked up, and frowned. Since it was his normal expression when his solitude was disturbed, he knew that his visitor would not be offended. Looking closer, Snape doubted he even noticed; the aristocratic man was near seething with some indefinable emotion locked behind a blank expression. "Lucius. What brings you here?"

The platinum-haired pureblood nodded sharply in greeting, closing the door behind him with an exquisitely precise motion. Snape stilled. Lucius Malfoy was only ever that deliberate when something was very wrong. "Severus." His tone was clipped. "Crabbe and Goyle."

The dark Potions Master waited, but no more was forthcoming. "Yes?"

"Dead."

Snape's head shot up and he stared at Malfoy incredulously. _Ah_, he thought in the safety of his mind, _that would do it_. The two large men had been Malfoy's to control since their school days. They could have been in Hufflepuff with the traits they displayed: not overly bright and loyal to a fault. Snape was not surprised that Malfoy was furious and grieved.

But, for all that they could have been used as prototypes for any mindless thug, they had been strong fighters. Snape would not have expected them to die easily.

"Where?"

"Between Hogsmeade and the Shrieking Shack. Two nights ago." Malfoy's carefully held expression twisted into disgust. "A shop assistant found them yesterday evening. They'd been beheaded and gutted like livestock."

He was far too inured with death and the horrible forms it could take to wince at that, but Snape felt the block of ice that shuddered and grew in his gut. "Cutting hex?"

The tall pureblood shrugged with the casual elegance that breeding and extensive training as a child brought. "The Aurors discovered dark magic traces in the immediate vicinity, but they were not strong enough to survive the time elapsed without degradation. Without any of the wands involved, it's impossible to tell who cast what."

"None of the wands?" Snape frowned. "Crabbe and Goyle?"

"Missing." Malfoy shook his head at Snape's unspoken inquiry, and elaborated with emphasis. "They could not be found. By _anyone_. The killer most likely has them."

"Most likely," Snape murmured. He did not think so. He could not think of any reason why the Demon would keep the wands of its victims, save perhaps as trophies.

"You have not heard anything?" Malfoy asked. There was a quality in his voice that was rarely there, a barely hidden plea. Snape knew that the older wizard must be aching for information, for revenge, for anything that might alleviate the loss of two faithful men.

He shook his head. "Nothing. If anyone knew of the killings, it would have been all over the school by noon." Very little could be kept secret in a castle such as this; gossip was rife and eavesdroppers everywhere. Even the entrance to Salazar Slytherin's Chamber could be discovered if one knew the right question and the right person – or ghost – to ask. After a pause he said, almost gently, "I am sorry, Lucius. They were good men."

Malfoy smirked. It was nearly a smile. "They would curse you for saying so. But it is true."

Snape spoke after another long silence. "You will be taking the boys with you, then."

"Yes." Malfoy allowed some of his exhaustion to slip through. "The _Daily Prophet_ will not be kind tomorrow. Vincent and Gregory do not need to learn of their fathers' deaths through that filth."

Nodding, Snape pulled out his wand and spelled a quick summons onto the Slytherin noticeboard. "They will be here soon. Take them with you directly – I will arrange the necessary notices to the professors."

"I appreciate it, Severus." Malfoy paused a moment. "That is not the only reason I am here. Our Lord is not fazed by the deaths of two simple Death Eaters." Though his tone remained entirely neutral, long familiarity allowed Snape to read the bitterness hidden behind ice grey eyes. Reincarnation had done no favours for the Dark Lord's opinion of his followers' worth. "Is your last order completed?"

Snape suppressed a grimace. "The blood-binding potion. Yes." It was a potion darker than most and one that, though Snape was apprehensive of the reasons behind the Dark Lord's order, he was nevertheless glad would soon be off his hands. Rising, he went to his personal storeroom – one that the Gryffindor Trio had never caught even a rumour of – and collected the requisite vial. He had barely handed it to Malfoy when two loud yet tentative knocks sounded on his door. Taking a deep breath, Snape steeled himself to the task of telling his students that one was now an orphan, and the other to be left in the tentative care of his self-consumed mother.

The rest of the day did not improve. His classes were quiet, allowing the Potions Master to preoccupy himself with worrying over the Demon Conchobar and its motives. The Demon was haunting the grounds around Hogwarts, though this was the first time he had heard tell of its victims. Perhaps Crabbe and Goyle had thought the scruffy Muggle-looking Demon a bit of light entertainment. He would not put it past them: they had never understood the purpose of a disguise, and their appetite for casual cruelty had only grown with their age.

The Demon would attack soon; when, he did not know, but its window of opportunity was small. The Headmaster would be returning in a few days, further delays notwithstanding, and the wards returned to full strength. They had not helped against Green, but perhaps they would be a little more effective against a creature that held no invitation and was far more vicious. It was a faint hope, and his opportunity to discover it false came sooner than he would have liked.

He did not see Professor McGonagall until dinner that night, but when he did, Snape knew that something had happened. She was pale, her lips pressed into a thin line. Catching her gaze, he raised an eyebrow. She glanced down, and back. Snape followed her motion, seeing the claymore's hilt against the side of her green robes.

The pommel stone was black.

Swearing aloud was not in his nature; he would have done it anyway, had he not been in a room full of happily oblivious staff and students. He sat through the meal with the experienced poise given by long hours of playing the Order's spy in the presence of the Dark Lord, and retreated a moment after McGonagall.

It was not long until curfew; with the students – most of them, at any rate – safe in their common rooms, he went to McGonagall's office. She sat with the naked blade across her lap, the hilt gripped in one white-knuckled hand. A pensieve sat on her desk.

"Severus," she greeted when he appeared.

He paused a moment, caught by the incongruous sight of the pensieve. "What is that?"

"The sword's memory."

Snape blinked. "The sword's memory," he repeated, as if doing so would give some sense to the words.

"The enchantment was added by its eighteenth bearer. When touched by blood, it records the image of its surroundings and stores the memory in the pommel stone for a short time. My ancestor believed he would not survive his encounter, and hoped this would give his successor necessary information about the Demon. Most often it simply recorded the bearer's death." Her voice was very, very bitter. "I transferred its last memory to the pensieve."

Meriadoc.

He did not say the name. It lay like acid on his tongue, like shadow over her eyes.

"Minerva." Quiet, as utterly neutral as he could make it, his tone nevertheless relayed his request to his colleague.

It hurt her. He knew it hurt her. At one time he might have taken satisfaction in knowing the power he wielded with a single word, the advantage that the power gave him over a witch his senior in both magic and years. At one time he had been a true Death Eater. Now he spoke only for necessity's sake, and regretted even then the pain that hollowed his colleague's cheeks. Snape shook his head empty of morbid thoughts; Malfoy's visit had brought this on, and he needed a clear mind for the coming confrontation.

If he was to help her at all, he needed to know. She knew this, and nodded her assent.

Snape leaned forward and looked into the pensieve.

**oOoOoOo**

_Blood_.

_A single drop of blood, taken from the tip of a finger. The dying glow of the pommel's activation was enough to illuminate the hand that held it, no more. The stone was opaque, the blade near shivering with the presence of the Demon. _

_Meriadoc McGonagall glided on silence-charmed feet towards the entrance of the large circular room, keeping as close to the shadows as possible. It was not much, for the entire room was littered with paraphernalia spanning centuries and continents, but the room was dark. Meriadoc bore a familial resemblance to his sister that was more a matter of manner than birth features. His robes were black, not quite Auror robes, though similar in design. There was a gaunt, desperate look to his face, as if he had not left the war against Voldemort, had not enjoyed the ten year reprieve that the others had experienced. _

_The door was opened, slowly, silently, a mere crack that allowed Meriadoc to see into the room beyond. It was empty, but through a doorway beyond the Demon Conchobar could be seen moving about. Meriadoc took a deep breath, and another. He held his wand in one hand, the sword in the other. He took one more breath, and then he was hurling himself through the door, a spell in the air and another on his lips._

_The first spell engulfed Conchobar in a wash of red light. The Demon stumbled, dropping the ceramic mug it held._

_The second spell flew through the air where Conchobar had been a moment before. It struck a cabinet in an explosion of shattered glass. _

_There was no target for the third spell. Meriadoc moved forward cautiously, gaze darting to and fro. Before he had gone five paces, Conchobar slammed into him from the side, sending both sprawling to the ground. Meriadoc rolled to his feet with his wand in his hand, but he had dropped the sword. His expression flickered briefly when he saw it in Conchobar's hand._

"_Wizard," Conchobar snarled._

_Meriadoc flung a quick succession of deadly spells at it. Three of the five hit, but the hexes that should have fatally wounded the Demon - or at least incapacitated it - had no more effect than the first. The sixth spell was the most successful, ripping open the Demon's flesh on its chest and left arm. _

_It did nothing to slow Conchobar, however. The sword was at Meriadoc's throat before he could speak another word. And, as it was, he was too distracted to cast another spell. The large wound, the grisly mess of torn flesh that had wept blood in rivers, flickered with tiny bolts of lightning. Meriadoc could only stare as the wound was knit shut, the work of a deadly and painful dark curse that would have earned him a severe reprimand in the Auror's office undone in moments. He raised horror-filled eyes to meet the Demon's flat gaze._

_The Demon spoke in ancient Gaelic. When Meriadoc did not respond, it repeated its words again in English. "You're a McGonagall," Conchobar said in its rough, light voice. The disgust was plain. There was no trace of the wound left, save for a shredded and blood soaked shirt._

"_You will not leave this room alive, Demon," Meriadoc hissed. In his eyes was the grim endurance of a soldier, the ferocity of a hunter cornered. The knowledge of his coming death was held there; he did not flinch from it. "When I die, another will come, and another. We will destroy ourselves before we allow you to join the Dark Lord."_

"_Dark Lord," Conchobar repeated. _

_Meriadoc's grip tightened around his wand. "_Avada Ke–_"_

_He never finished the darkest spell he could have cast. Conchobar slammed the sword through his neck with a single smooth motion. The Demon's expression did not change in the slightest at the death of the man._

_Hesitant footsteps approached the room; a grey-haired Muggle woman appeared. She gasped as she saw the body, though the resignation in her eyes revealed her experience with such things. "Connor?"_

_Conchobar looked up. There was no expression at all in the rough lines of his face. "I'm going to Scotland."_

_The woman spoke again, but the words were lost to the haze of distance and motion as it portkeyed itself to Hogwarts._

**oOoOoOo**

There was a moment of disorientation as he came out of the pensieve. Snape blinked, resisting the urge to shake his head to clear the residue dizziness. He wanted to curse the ex-Auror; if resurrection were possible, he would raise Meriadoc McGonagall from the grave and upbraid him like a student for Gryffindorish stupidity. And, at the same time, he wanted to say something – anything – to alleviate his colleague's grief. He did neither.

"The Demon is in the castle," Snape said, turning to face Minerva McGonagall.

She nodded. "On one of the lower levels. I have not been able to track its position with any accuracy." She rose to her feet.

"Where are you going?" Snape said sharply.

The grey eyes that met his gaze were like steel. "To the Great Hall. I will not allow the Demon anywhere near the students."

Snape allowed himself a brief appreciation for her tactical sense even as he fell into step beside her. There were only a few entrances to the Great Hall, and a large area for the Demon to traverse; it had shown itself to be lethal in close spaces.

McGonagall glanced at him sidelong. "You should leave. The Demon is here for me, no one else."

"I always credited you with more intelligence, Minerva," he snapped back.

A faint smile curved her lips, gone before it had really appeared.

He continued with his case before she could voice further objections. "The light spells are ineffective, and you do not have the disposition required to cast the stronger dark curses."

Snape was right, and McGonagall knew it; she remained silent for the rest of the walk. It was stressful; both professors watched the darkness around them without cease, even as they listened for the slightest noise out of place. Both kept their wands ready; McGonagall kept a hand on the hilt of the sword. But they met no one, and the Great Hall was dark and silent when they entered it, the enchanted ceiling providing little light from the overcast night sky. McGonagall lit the Hall with a wave of her wand, and the shadows fled. They were not used to the Hall so empty and late; it was eerie, almost forlorn with neither students nor ghosts to give it life.

It was the dark Potions Master who first broke the quiet, more for his colleague's comfort than his own. "Do you know where it is?"

"On this level, certainly. It is moving around a great deal."

Snape scowled. "The wards are inadequate."

She shrugged, the barest movement of stiff shoulders, and sighed. "We had supposed as much before. It is invisible to them, I believe. The wards have proven insensitive to all but the greater dark magicks in the past."

Both teachers were silent as they remembered all that had occurred over the last seven years. It was with some asperity that Snape wondered if life at the school would settle down after Harry Potter's graduation.

Evoking his name had the same effect that some believed Voldemort's name held: the boy appeared in the doorway, managing to look both uncertain and anxious at the same time. He held a yellowed parchment in stiff fingers.

"Mr Potter," McGonagall said after a moment, during which they lowered wands that had almost sent their student into oblivion. "What brings you here at this time of night?"

Harry looked at McGonagall with some trepidation; he knew well the temper of his Head of House, having tested its limits many times. His gaze drifted towards Snape and held steady beneath the Potions Master's glare.

"You said, sir, that I should tell you if I ever saw MacLeod again. He's on the Map."

McGonagall straightened at that; Snape took two long strides forward and claimed the parchment. As he scanned it carefully, he asked, "And how did you come to discover this?"

Harry flushed and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "I couldn't sleep," he admitted. "There's never been a demon before."

Eyebrows rising, McGonagall said, "How did you know about the Demon? I really did not want you involved in this, Mr Potter."

"I know," said Harry. He looked almost apologetic. "It just sort of happened. Sorry, professor."

"I do not recall mentioning the Demon," Snape commented.

"No, but . . . " He looked down, then up. He was, Snape realised, choosing his words with as much unpractised care as a seventh year student was capable of using, trying hard not to upset his professors. "We did a bit of research on names, see, and Hermione thinks that the only creatures that can hide like that are demons."

"Where are your friends?" McGonagall queried, eyes drifting towards the door as if afraid that the other two thirds of her most troublesome group of students would appear.

"Asleep," Harry replied quickly. He saw his teachers' relief, and grimaced. "I didn't want to involve them in something like this."

"_You_ should not be involved, Mr Potter," McGonagall breathed. Resignation coloured her tone.

"Miss Granger's theory would work for Green," Snape broke in, "But not for MacLeod. Minerva, it is approaching the Hufflepuff dormitories." And indeed, a set of footprints clearly labelled _C MacLeod_ was making its cautious way down the stairs.

McGonagall growled something short and rude. Harry blinked in surprise, then raced after his fast-disappearing Transfigurations Professor.

Stiffening, Snape glared after them incredulously. "Gryffindors!" he muttered before following them out of the Great Hall.


	6. Chapter 6

In the darkness of the slumbering Hufflepuff den, Harry could barely follow Professor McGonagall. She was swift and silent on her feet, and her eyes shone with reflected light in a manner that reminded him of her Animagus form. Despite his many wanderings through Hogwarts he was not very familiar with this area; his only interest in it had been the way to the kitchens, and they had passed that turnoff three intersections ago. McGonagall paused in her stride; Harry could just make out a dark figure some ways further on.

"_Lumos_," McGonagall said breathlessly, and Harry caught a glimpse of a startled face and glinting eyes before the man twisted around a corner.

Lips pressed tight into a grim expression, McGonagall gave chase. There was really nothing else for Harry to do but follow. The light of McGonagall's wand shone steady and bright, filling the entire length of the corridor, and making of the alcoves deep pits of shadow.

The corridor before them was empty. McGonagall slowed down, eyes darting to and fro. Harry had almost reached her side when a solid shadow erupted from the closest alcove, slamming hard enough into McGonagall to make her lose her footing. Her light sputtered and died.

"Professor!" Harry cried out. Blinded by the sudden loss of light and forgetting the wand in his pocket, he reached out to grab at the old Muggle coat sweeping past him in a rush of air. He caught it and gave a firm tug – and found himself thrown into a suit of armour for his troubles. The clatter of falling metal was deafening in the narrow hallway.

Then the man was past them.

He did not halt when McGonagall gave chase with a shout, or when Harry joined her. But he hesitated as a pale grey figure came through the wall in front of him. The moment did not last long; with what Harry would have sworn was a shrug, MacLeod simply ran through the ghost.

"Oh, I say!" exclaimed the Fat Friar. The indignant protest was followed by many more as professor and student followed suit.

In the dim light, Harry could just see MacLeod's silhouette. He hugged the wall, thrusting into alcoves with the closest arm as he ran, and the clatter of more armour falling warned his pursuers of the dangerous footing ahead.

Suddenly MacLeod dodged to the side. Ribbons of dark twisted energy like the afterimage of bright light scythed through the air where he had been a moment before. Stone shuddered and groaned in protest where the dark ribbons splashed against the walls. The unmistakeable cadences of Snape's voice cracked out another spell and this, too, missed. MacLeod tackled him then, granting him no space to cast spells.

Harry and McGonagall had slowed down to pick their way through the armour scattered about. By the time they reached the struggling pair, MacLeod had gotten the upper hand, and he threw Snape at them, sending all three sprawling. McGonagall and Snape were tangled together. Harry winced as he sat up, and finally remembered his wand. "_Stupefy!_" cried Harry, aiming at the retreating man.

The red light broke against MacLeod's back like waves against a rock. The Boy-who-lived stared after him in astonishment as he bounded up the stairs. Harry knew his spell had been strong, yet all the effect it had had on MacLeod was to make him stumble. Snapping out of his shock at the sound of the large front doors opening and closing, Harry scrambled to his feet and raced after MacLeod and his professors.

By the time they stepped outside, MacLeod had sprinted halfway to the Whomping Willow. Harry's next _stupefy_ only caused him to start zigzagging his way across the grounds.

"Enough of that!" Snape bit out in between breaths. "Your spells won't work."

"Yes, sir," Harry muttered. He tried not to feel resentful, even as he raced to keep up with the long-legged Potions Master. McGonagall had outstripped them, determination giving her a turn of speed that Harry had never suspected she possessed.

Snape opened his mouth, looking like he was about to order Harry back inside the safety of the castle, but MacLeod reached the Willow then and dived under the thrashing branches, disappearing into the secret tunnel. Snape lost his train of thought to urgency. With an inward groan he could not spare the breath to utter, Harry pushed himself faster.

Both of them reached the Whomping Willow at the same time. Professor McGonagall had stilled the branches and already entered. Light speared out from three separate wands within the tunnel, sending odd shadows to loom on the narrow roughly hewn passageway. McGonagall and MacLeod were fighting in a narrow part close to the Shrieking Shack. Both held swords, and Harry watched with fascinated disbelief as they brought the weapons to bear on each other with little effect in the inhibitingly close quarters. Both weapons were long and too unwieldy to be used with any success.

MacLeod's face was lit from below by the harsh light of McGonagall's wand. He was scowling, and his eyes glinted ferociously in the deep struggling shadows cast. The lighting made of him and his living shadow something inhuman, and Harry shuddered at the odd sense of disconnection from reality.

The Gryffindor boy jumped and pressed himself to the side as Snape came up behind him. The dark Potions Master took one look at the scene, scowled, and cast a spell that Harry had never heard before. The dark ribbons of energy he had seen in the Hufflepuff den ripped through the air towards the fighters, Harry and his professor following as fast as they could. McGonagall must have heard the spell coming, for she ducked at the last moment. Eyes widening, MacLeod twisted out of the way. Some of the ribbons hit him, and most splashed against rock and dirt.

The earth groaned in protest. The tunnel trembled. The rumbling grew, and now it seemed as if the earth was growling in anger. Dirt rained down on them from above, coating their arms and stinging their eyes. With a muted roar, the tunnel collapsed around them.

The return of awareness came slowly, filled as it was with dust in his throat and grit in his eyes. Harry coughed, then choked and coughed again. He blinked; his eyes stung, and there was nothing to see. Groping in the loose, damp earth, he found his wand and whispered a cracked _lumos_. The light blazed in the small space, making him blink and wince.

Snape was half buried beneath soil and rocks behind him. The passage back to Hogwarts was completely filled; Harry did not allow himself to think about it. Instead he pulled his Potions professor out of the rubble. The man scowled; more from pain than anything else, Harry thought. Without a word, Snape grabbed his wand and stumbled over to where the two Scottish fighters had been. There was not so much soil here, but the rocks were larger and more damaging. The swords lay abandoned.

Where McGonagall once stood, boulders filled the space. Harry's laboured breath caught in his throat; he didn't dare to think that his Head of House might be crushed under that. But, in the absolute silence of the foreshortened tunnel, he heard a faint whimper. Harry stared as a small feline head poked through a hole in the rubble. A large bloody bruise decorated one side of her head behind her ear. Then he was moving forward with a choked cry, and digging his transfigured professor out as fast and as carefully as he could.

Snape, meanwhile, approached the still body of MacLeod. He dragged the McGonagall claymore in one hand, using the other to steady his way. For a long moment he stared at the dirt-streaked body, examining the way his spell and the rocks had damaged him. With a sharp indrawn breath and a face as hard as steel, Snape lifted up the claymore and plunged it through MacLeod's chest. He pulled it out immediately, staggering back and letting it drop from nerveless fingers.

Harry cried out in shock. He stared at his Potions professor, the unconscious cat cradled in his arms, unable to believe what he had just witnessed. "Y- you– you killed him!" Harry exclaimed. He took a halting step back. He didn't – couldn't – accept that his professor had just murdered a man in cold blood. Snape wasn't a Death Eater. Not anymore. Surely he hadn't–!

But Snape was staring at the body. "No," he said, incredulity and horror in his voice. "It isn't dead. Watch."

Reluctantly, but with a small part of morbid fascination, Harry looked at MacLeod. Tiny flickers of lightning edged around the gaping hole, knitting it whole as cleanly as if he had never been stabbed through the heart. The bruises were fading beneath the dirt, and the marks of Snape's dark spell had already disappeared.

"I don't understand," whispered Harry, awestruck.

"Nor do I," Snape replied grimly. "The sword should have been effective." He glared at the weapon in disgust. For a moment, all was silent. Then he seemed to shake himself. "The way to the Shack is clear. Take Professor McGonagall and the swords up. I'll deal with the Demon."

Harry obeyed. He was too numbed by the shock of the cave-in and the non-death to do anything else.

* * *

Snape stared at his captive for a long moment. Under the forced sleep of his non-death and the darkest stunning spell Snape could employ, the harsh planes of the Demon's features were softened into youth. Conchobar had the appearance of a boy, a bare few years older than his students. Snape studied him with surprise. It had not been obvious while MacLeod was aware. The face was young, but the expression and eyes were not. The bulky tan trench coat that had concealed both sword and body lay in an unceremonious heap in the corner. Without it, Conchobar seemed smaller, his frame lean and toned, without an ounce of spare fat. He was scruffy, his features unremarkable. Just a boy.

It left a bad taste in his mouth.

Straightening abruptly, Snape checked the bindings on MacLeod. He had made them physical, an extension of the chair itself, having little faith in the effectiveness of purely magical bindings on a creature astonishingly resistant to magical attack.

Harry stepped into the room. "Professor McGonagall's resting," he reported. "She hasn't changed back yet. Will she be all right?"

Snape frowned. "She will not be able to regain human form until the ill effects of that blow to the head subside. It is dangerous for Animagi to attempt a transformation with a concussion."

The Gryffindor boy shifted his feet, looking uncharacteristically uncertain in the presence of his least favourite professor. "I don't get it," said Harry at last. "Why'd he try to kill McGonagall?" Frowning when Snape said nothing, he continued, "He can't be working for Voldemort, can he? I mean, he _saved_ me from Death Eaters!"

"Did he?" Snape's head came up, and he studied Harry with sharp interest. When Harry flushed and dropped his gaze to the floor, Snape said, "This is not the time for this discussion. We will speak of it again. You were not doing something foolish, I trust?"

Harry's head jerked up at that, surprise clearly written in emerald eyes. "No, sir," he replied cautiously. "Not any more than usual."

"Hmm." Snape's dark gaze glinted with humour at that. A tiny movement to the side alerted him. "Quiet now, Mr Potter," he said, moving to stand directly before the bound man.

MacLeod awoke with a jerk that would have seen him surge to his feet had he not been bound to the chair. His eyes snapped open, took in his situation and the nature of the restraints on him, and his struggles for freedom ceased as suddenly as they had begun. Snape was not fool enough to believe him resigned to his fate: tension thrummed through the taut muscles. Sharp grey eyes swept the room once, settling on Snape.

"Who are you?" Snape questioned.

"Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod," came the answer. He looked very startled, and his mouth closed with an audible snap.

Snape smirked grimly. The _Veritaserum_ was working, then. He had had doubts whether it would on this creature. "Do you follow the Dark Lord?"

"No." MacLeod's glare was murderous as the answer forced its way past unwilling lips.

"Why were you at Hogwarts?"

"I was looking for McGonagall."

"Why?"

"The sword . . ." he trailed off, his jaw clenched against the words. Sweat beaded on his brow.

Harry shifted a pace forward. "Is he fighting the potion, Professor?" he asked in awe.

Snape held up one hand, and Harry subsided. "Are you called the Demon of the MacLeods?"

"Yes." The answer was slow in coming, a low hiss nearly lost in the snarl on MacLeod's lips.

"What are you?"

"I'm not a demon," MacLeod growled. The fire was back in his eyes. The _Veritaserum_, which should have lasted for more than an hour, was no longer in effect after five minutes.

"What are you?" Snape repeated, filling his voice with menace in an attempt to compensate for the loss of the potion.

MacLeod grinned at him irreverently. "Annoyed."

In full interrogator mode, Snape ignored the flippancy. Gathering himself, he locked eyes with his captive. "_Legilimens_."

**oOoOoOo**

_The clash of steel against steel ringing through the air, vibrations running into his hands and up his arms. Hands wrapped around a familiar dragon-carved hilt with a competence that spoke of long experience. Shift left, parry, feint, lunge. A fight with only one possible outcome_.

**oOoOoOo**

_A great warhorse, a laughing face, a man dressed in the height of fashion for a Spanish court long gone. "I am Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez. I will be your teacher."_

**oOoOoOo**

_A storm in a once-clear sky, lightning and a whirling mix of dark clouds. A desperate ride across the broken moors, driven by nameless urgency and dread. A crumbled tower, the smell of ozone sharp in the air. Stones tossed to the ground. Ramirez, eyes wide open, head separated from his body, blood pooled beneath the fallen skull_.

**oOoOoOo**

_Lightning_.

**oOoOoOo**

_The orange warmth of firelight washed against stone walls. A fur covered bed, an old woman with hair that had once been wheat-golden, sky blue eyes dimmed with age. Beloved voice_.

"_Promise me something, Connor."_

"_Anything, my love."_

"_Remember me. Light a candle for me on my birthday."_

"_Forever."_

**oOoOoOo**

Snape staggered back, the spell broken by a surge of heart-felt grief, old and as fresh as if no time had passed. He spent a few moments catching his breath while MacLeod glared at him. Fury snapped in the Highlander's eyes.

"You're a goddamn mindreader." MacLeod snarled it like an epithet. "You get off on other people's memories?"

Ignoring the words, Snape eyed him carefully. The memories were potent and unusually clear, far more than they should have been. He leaned forward to catch the steely eyes again. "_Legilimens_."

**oOoOoOo**

_A Highlands village of the Sixteenth Century. Men jeering and shouting, punching and throwing stones. Children with branches. Women, faces twisted in hate and fear, wielding burning brands. A heavy weight on his neck, arms pulled roughly up and tied with rawhide strips to the oxen yoke_.

"_I'll say it then – you've the devil in you."_

"_Burn him!"_

_Hands clawing at his eyes, roughshod feet aiming for his genitals. They were clansmen. Kinsmen. Rage in every voice, in the eyes that stabbed at him, wounding him deeper than rock and branch and burning embers. _

"_Connor MacLeod was my kinsman. I don't know who you are."_

"_He has a demon."_

_The words, like daggers in his heart, spoken in the language of the Highlands. He was dying with each voice. His kinsmen. _

"_Burn him!"_

"_We'll banish him!"_

_Harsh hands, the hands of his clan, pushing, shoving, hurting, banishing from heart and clan–_

**oOoOoOo**

He was shoved out with force enough to send him back several steps. The pain in this memory was so complete, so laced with anguish and betrayal and bewilderment that Snape could not breathe. He had never felt anything like it. The memory was a deathblow, a mortal wound.

Snape took one shuddering breath, and another. He shook the residual of MacLeod's emotions off, and considered the memory objectively. He was close now; he knew it. The force of the memories was so much stronger than was normal, stronger than any he had encountered with Legilimency before. It was as if he was experiencing them firsthand, living the events and the emotions. They were overwhelming. Dangerous, he knew, to be trapped so thoroughly in another's mind.

But he had not yet gotten what he needed. He had not yet found anything to do with either the Dark Lord or Clan McGonagall, nor anything that told him what manner of creature MacLeod _was_, and how he might be killed. The McGonagall claymore had not fulfilled its promise, and Snape needed to find out how it could do so.

The eyes that stared at him were feral, alight with distress twisted into primal rage. Taking a deep breath, Snape braced himself for the next onslaught.

"_Legilimens!_"

He was aware of stormy glaring eyes and a low malicious growl saying, "Let's see how you like this," before he was grabbed by something other than the spell and pulled into a maelstrom of memories.

**oOoOoOo**

_Lightning_.

**oOoOoOo**

_Swords. Fighting. The clash of blades, the swing and resistance as head separated from body_.

The casual barbarism of it startled Snape badly. Before he could do more than flinch, he was swept along.

**oOoOoOo**

"_There are rules." Ramirez again, just as flamboyantly dressed, but with a serious expression. "Fights are one on one; once started, no one can interfere. No fighting on holy ground."_

**oOoOoOo**

_Holy ground. The awareness of it thrumming through his veins, the candles and Japanese tapestries only serving as a visual confirmation of the inborn sense. Fighting, again, sword wielded against an enemy dressed centuries out of place in the modern building. But the sword shatters before the killing blow connects, accompanied by a similar break somewhere in his soul. Holy ground. Necessity in defence, but the wound in his soul remains_.

**oOoOoOo**

"_There can be only one."_

_A headless body. Lightning_.

**oOoOoOo**

"_You can't drown, you fool, you're immortal!"_

The memories were thick now, overwhelming him. He was drowning in them, in their strength, in their number. He could no longer distinguish one from the next.

_A storm-ridden ship, sturdy, but not sturdy enough against the crashing of an ocean's fury. The sailors fell into their cold, wet graves, and he drowned_.

_A Highland warrior, dark-haired, olive-skinned, large and powerful. "Donnchaidh. Kinsman."_

_A war-torn country, buildings turned to rubble, explosions lighting the sky, the air constant with the muffled firecracker sounds of tanks and artillery. A little girl clutched in his arms, machinegun fire raking his back with multiple points of agony_.

"_It's a kind of magic."_

_Swing of sword, roll of head. Lightning_.

_Blade's edge across his chest, splitting him open, gutting him, killing him. Fire burning, shutting down heart and lungs. Bullets piercing head and heart and liver. Sea swallowing him whole. The rush of air, sudden sharp rocks, broken limbs and crushed skull_.

He wanted to retch. The pain was awful, worse than the Cruciatus curse. He was dying over and over and over. Dying violently, painfully. He wanted to break the spell and retreat from this mind full of madness and torment, but it gripped him and would not let him go, pulling him back under the memories.

_Swing of sword. Headless body. Lightning_.

_Duncan, laughing. –Boston Common, Eighteenth Century aristocrats. –American Indians, the Lakota. –Paris, during the French Revolution. –"How about loneliness? You refuse to let anyone love you." –A young Highlands woman, smiling. –Nazi Germany. –A small antiques shop in New York. –British soldiers in the Zulu wars. –Always, always the lightning_.

Too much! The memories were too much. More than a single lifetime, each as potent as the day before, each one hitting him with stunning force. He was choking on them, drowning in them.

_Swing of sword, falling head. Lightning_.

"_The sensation you are feeling is the Quickening."_

_Headless body. Lightning. Headless body. Lightning. Headless body, lightning, headless body, lightning, headless body lightning headless body lightning lightning lightning_–

"**_There can be only one!"_**

**oOoOoOo**

Snape came to himself on his hands and knees, trembling, his face mere inches from a puddle of stomach bile. He raised his head with an effort, climbed to his feet and stood, swaying. He was dimly aware of his student hovering at his elbow with uncharacteristic concern. MacLeod was slumped unmoving in his chair. Snape stared at him in horror.

"What are you?" hissed Snape, his voice raw, as if a scream had been locked tight in his throat for a long time.

Blinking, MacLeod raised his head. His expression was blank, sundered of emotion. Swiftly it hardened into the mask that had covered it before. The Highlander glanced at Harry, standing silently beside his professor, and said, "I am Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel. And I am immortal."

Harry broke the silence first. "Then you are a demon." He sounded betrayed and hurt. Snape shot him a glance, but the boy was staring at MacLeod.

MacLeod grimaced. "No."

Snape took a step back. His thoughts spun and fled from his grasp; his mind felt as raw as his throat. "And if I took your head with that sword?" he hissed. "Will you die _then_?"

Eyes narrowed, MacLeod's expression mocked him. "Are you going to try?"

Harry looked back and forth between them in confusion.

There was too much. Too much death and pain and blood and lightning. He was reeling with it all, with the stuff of nightmares in his head and the taste of bile in his mouth. Snape felt like screaming, felt as if he _had_ screamed, sometime in the trap that Conchobar had set for him.

Then he was moving, scrabbling for the claymore he had left lying against the wall, and MacLeod was moving, smashing himself and his chair into the wall with such force that it splintered, and MacLeod was free.

His freedom did not last for long; before he had time to grasp his own katana, MacLeod was hit with a heavy piece of chair that Harry flung across the room in panic and uncontrolled magic. He crumpled.

But before Snape had a chance to do anything more than rise with the claymore gripped in two hands, the outer door blasted open.

Standing there, surveying the scene with surprise, was Lucius Malfoy.


	7. Chapter 7

For an instant they all stood immobile: Snape and Harry Potter on one side, Lucius Malfoy and three men on the other. They were all Death Eaters, all of them Malfoy's men. Snape set the claymore down, not quite daring to reach for his wand. Harry was frozen, eyes wide as he found himself suddenly alone in a room full of enemies.

Lucius Malfoy was the first to speak. "Severus, how unexpected."

Flicking him an impatient glare, Snape said, "Lucius. What are you doing here?" The panic that had dictated his earlier reactions to the Demon was gone, replaced with cold calculation in a situation that, though no less dire, was more familiar.

"I?" Malfoy raised a pale eyebrow. "I am merely investigating the deaths of two friends. And you? Are you not supposed to be teaching, Severus?"

The Potions Master answered that with a dark scowl. "School business."

Cold grey eyes regarded Harry for a moment. "So I see," Malfoy drawled. "Chasing after runaways again? Really, the standards have lowered to disgraceful levels in recent times."

Flushing, clearly stung by that comment, Harry retorted, "Sure. When your son joined Hogwarts." Snape glared at him in warning, trying to impart some sensibility of the precariousness of their situation, but the boy refused to look away from the more immediate dangers in front of him.

The icy gaze that flicked over Harry dismissed him in an instant, and Malfoy did not deign to trade words with the boy. Instead, he looked at the crumpled, still MacLeod. "And what is this?"

Snape scowled dismissively. "A Muggle," he said without care.

"A Muggle in Hogsmeade? How . . . revolting." But Malfoy was no longer looking at MacLeod. His eyes were fixed on the katana lying centimetres from the outstretched hand. His expression was blank; Snape could almost feel his mind turning the evidence over, and when he came to what was most likely the correct conclusion, the aristocratic pureblood shot the unconscious man a look that promised pain and a slow death in the near future.

Snape remained still under the furious gaze that swung back to him. There was, he knew, very little chance of coming out of this situation well; not with Potter standing there, and certainly not with the Demon who had probably killed Crabbe and Goyle lying on the floor in front of Lucius Malfoy. At least, he decided in the deepest part of his Occluded mind, McGonagall would be safe, and hopefully able to tell the others what had happened.

"Where did this _Muggle_ come from?" Malfoy demanded, spitting the word with more vehemence than should be possible.

Snape did not shrug, but the expression in his dark eyes was as close as he ever came to it. "I caught him here."

"A fortuitous discovery," Malfoy commended him. "As is the boy. Our Lord will be pleased with you."

Harry stiffened at that, and raised the wand he had been surreptitiously drawing. The Death Eaters had been waiting for him to try something foolish, it appeared, and his wand was ripped from his fingers by several curses. As were two others buried deep in his pockets. Malfoy caught the extra wands. He only had to look at them for a moment before his eyes widened in recognition.

"I see," was all he said, but in his tone was the certainty of yet more pain in store for the boy.

Snape cursed, silently and fully. He wanted to shout at the boy and demand just where he had picked up those particular wands. He did not know them immediately, but the context and Malfoy's reaction told him everything he needed to know. Constrained by a position that was rapidly becoming untenable, he ignored the frantic looks from the boy and said in what – from him – amounted to a conversational tone, "You know I cannot let you do this, Lucius. I can take no part in kidnapping Potter."

"Your inconvenient Oath to the old man, yes. I _have_ taken that into account," Malfoy replied. He smirked.

Snape dodged.

Against four wands he was as defenceless as the boy, and darkness claimed him before he had taken a half dozen steps.

He woke to the smell of wood burning, heated iron and old potions ingredients. The light came from candles and the fire beneath a large cauldron, a warm orange glow he was well accustomed to. The floor beneath him was cold hard stone; it was not the dusty wood of his last coherent memory. Snape lurched to his feet, suddenly aware of the possible dangers of waking in a strange place.

"Do be calm, Sseverusss."

That low, sibilant voice froze him in his tracks. Turning, Snape found his knees again. "My lord."

Voldemort chuckled, a dry rustling sound like scales sliding one over the other. "Lucius is abrupt in his methods, but efficient. I admire your skill, Severus, in bringing the boy to a place so far out of the old fool's protection."

His head was pounding with the after-effects of the stunners; his mouth tasted dry and full of sand. Lowering his gaze to hide the turmoil in his eyes, Snape murmured, "It was luck, my lord."

Voldemort chuckled again, and Snape realized with abstract terror that the Dark Lord knew Snape had not intended anything of the sort, but was pleased enough anyway that he would not punish the potions master yet again for giving that Oath to Dumbledore seven long years ago.

Which meant, of course, that Harry Potter was finally and completely in Voldemort's power.

For a moment, Snape wondered if it had been a trap from the start after all, and the two demons really were in league with the Dark Lord. It was a moment he did not have the luxury to spend on idle thought. Voldemort was still speaking, and Snape was having trouble reconciling the apparent calm of this laboratory to the controlled battle high he had left. It took a few breaths to force his mind to the present. Mentally rewinding the conversation, Snape's eyes widened.

_Albus_, he thought forlornly. The situation had gone horribly, terribly wrong, and it was only going to get worse.

"You are quiet, Severus," Voldemort observed.

Snape looked up sharply, but the red eyes did not seem angry. "I am overwhelmed, my lord," he murmured.

Thin, bloodless lips stretched into a happy smile. "Yes, it is a surprising thing, is it not? To think that my ancestor's teacher was nearly as powerful as Slytherin himself, and that he may still live."

The Death Eater turned spy really, really hoped that that did not mean what he thought it meant. "The alchemist Flamel has been alive for almost as long," he commented.

"Flamel! The man relies on a paltry rock. No, my loyal servant, Salazar Slytherin's teacher achieved true immortality. He kept his secret hidden well, but not well enough that Slytherin did not discover it." Wrapped in sweeping black robes that somehow did not disturb the runes he was applying to the floor, Voldemort continued, "And now I have found it. Here, coded into one of his earliest journals, Slytherin has left a message for his Heir. Here he has written instructions on how one might secure the aid of his teacher. I had thought to wait until Samhain, but Potter's capture has made this the opportune moment. The timing of the ritual is necessarily more delicate. You will help with the potion, Severus."

Now that he was fully focussed on the Dark Lord's plans, Snape began to comprehend the magnitude of them. The significance of Samhain was not lost upon him; nor was the presence of the blood-binding potion he himself had made, ready to be used beside an ancient, enchanted vial of blood and the cauldron that contained, to his discerning eyes, the beginnings of a dark potion for the ritual. It was complex, but well within his capabilities, and the Dark Lord knew it. There would be no sabotaging of this potion. The runes of binding and protection that Voldemort was laying around the cauldron were the final component. With all of this, Voldemort meant to perform a Ritual of Summoning, and his intended target was the darkest of creatures. A demon.

And, taking a small opportunity to glance at Salazar Slytherin's journal, Snape saw the face of the demon that was to be summoned. It was a face he recognised quite well, despite the black ink and the thick, long hair shadowing the eyes.

Under the critical eyes of the first of his masters, Snape began to work.

* * *

Claws extended and retracted, extended and retracted as she stretched. There was a dull ache in her head, as if she had been squeezed down and was now too big for her skull. An unpleasant peak of pain marked the spot where fur was matted down in an ugly mix of dried blood and dirt. She opened slitted eyes and wobbled unsteadily as she rose. A tiny mewl of pain escaped her as her vision swam unpleasantly.

Minerva McGonagall regarded the dusty, ramshackle room with some confusion. Her last memory had been of dust rising and earth falling and the desperate need to avoid the rocks closing in about her. It was apparent that she had succeeded, but she needed now to check on the others, and the odd, tight quality of her magic told her that it would be most unwise to attempt regaining human form now.

One of the disadvantages of Animagus transformations was the lack of options after receiving a head wound.

On the other hand, she had long ago taught herself to recognise certain scents, should she ever come across them, and the smells that assaulted her when she stepped into the larger room told her exactly what had happened. There was Harry Potter, smelling of Gryffindor tower and boy and earth; there was Severus Snape, pungent with potions ingredients; and there was Lucius Malfoy. McGonagall hissed at this last, her ears flicking back and tail twitching. She knew the two Hogwarts males well enough to know that neither Gryffindor nor Slytherin would leave her injured and alone by choice. There were other smells, other people who had been here that she could not identify, and the scent of magic recently used, but it was what she saw that made her freeze.

Lying abandoned and scattered about the room as if thrown about by a child's hand were two swords she recognised immediately. The McGonagall claymore she could easily account for, knowing Severus as she did. The katana, she did not like. It meant that wherever her colleague and student had been taken, Conchobar had also gone, and the Demon without its weapon was still deadly.

McGonagall explored the Shack thoroughly, but found no other clues, and the passage back to the school blocked. There was very little a cat could do to raise the alarm, even when that cat was a skilled Transfigurations professor. Magic could not be used the same way; her emergency portkey had disappeared to the place that her clothing and her wand had gone when she changed. Faced with little choice, McGonagall left the Shack at a bounding run. Even as a cat it would take her precious time to make the long run back to Hogwarts.

Her run through Hogsmeade, however, was brought to an abrupt, skidding halt as the Animagus caught another scent she recognised. McGonagall twisted around, slitted eyes flicking up and down until she saw a familiar Muggle coat heading down another street. Sitting on her hind legs, McGonagall regarded the back of the erstwhile Muggle Studies professor as she debated her options.

The man was a professor, however briefly he had stayed. She had not heard any wrong of him, from either the students or the other professors, and had not noticed any suspicious behaviour herself. Severus was wary of him, but then Severus was wary of everyone, and he had not seen any signs of allegiance to You-Know-Who. The man was connected to the Demon, as enemy or ally she did not know, and that point was the most worrisome of all. But perhaps he would have some inkling of what to do when he found the abandoned katana; McGonagall could not communicate, not effectively, in this form.

The greatest reason she bounded after him, though, was the sense of urgency driven into her pounding skull. Severus was very capable of handling himself, but Harry Potter at the mercy of Death Eaters did not bear thinking about.

Adam Green stumbled as the determined cat latched herself onto his trench coat. He twisted around and stared at her curiously through green-gold eyes. "Here now, that's enough of that," he said gently, and tried to shake her away.

McGonagall hissed through a mouthful of wool and tugged as hard as she could. Then she took a few steps towards the Shack and gazed at Green expectantly.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Are you someone I know?" he murmured, eyes now sharp and assessing.

The cat, exhibiting impatience and urgency through ruffled fur, clamped onto the black wool and tugged again.

"Alright, alright!" Green raised both hands in a placating gesture that would have been lost on a real cat. "I'll come with you, whoever you are." And follow he did, as the cat ran ahead, coming back to pull at his coat again if he moved too slowly. McGonagall felt as if she were herding an entire group of first years rather than one man, and her ears twitched with irritation as she heard the man mutter, "I'm following a cat. What will Mac say?"

He slowed as he neared the Shrieking Shack, and even through her urgency McGonagall approved of his caution. As he stepped through the blasted door, he glanced down at her.

"This is where you want me?"

She mewled.

Expression impossible to read, Green scanned the ramshackle building. The recent trauma had not done anything for the stability of its structure, and he placed each step with care. He sucked in a sharp breath as he caught sight of the katana, and the glance he sent McGonagall's way was piercing.

"Damn," he murmured as he cautiously picked up the long, slender sword by its dragon hilt, "Mac won't like this."

He examined it carefully, then crouched beside the claymore and ran his eyes over it. McGonagall could tell when he spotted the blood on its edge; the look he gave her was speculative and wary.

"So you've done something to the Highlander," Green said, watching her carefully. For the first time, McGonagall noticed just how well he held the katana, and remembered that this man was no stranger to swords. She doubted suddenly the wisdom of bringing him to the Shack. "His body's not here. I assume you know how much you've bitten? Let's hope you can chew." He rose to his feet, the katana's point resting on the floorboards. "This isn't any of my business. Why did you bring me here?" He stared at the cat as if expecting her to answer.

McGonagall hissed in frustration. The man would do nothing, it seemed, and she still had to alert someone of Harry's capture. Albus would be ideal; he knew Legilimency and could communicate with her in her mind. Of course, Albus wasn't here.

"You must have brought me here for a reason," Green continued. "Isn't that right . . . Minnie?"

McGonagall stiffened and stared at him in disbelief. He had never seen her Animagus form, she was sure of that. And she _detested_ that moniker.

"Don't look so surprised, Minnie. You're the only other Scot in the whole castle, barring the odd student, and I can tell a family heirloom when I see one. Just what were you hoping to achieve?"

She had no way to answer that, so McGonagall mewled. Her urgency had not left her, and Green raised an eyebrow at the agitation she was displaying. Then his eyes widened.

"What–?" he began. The colour fled his face, and he pressed his free hand against his chest as pain flitted across his face. His eyes narrowed as he glared at the cat. "Very clever," he hissed, and staggered.

McGonagall felt the rising of dark magic in the air like a charge of static over her fur, tasted it and wanted to gag. It was centred on Green, though it did not appear to originate in him, and was pulling him . . . somewhere. The taint was so strong she could smell the blood in the magic, and she was moving before she consciously processed it all – that Severus had completed a blood-binding potion for Voldemort, and that only the Dark Lord had the power to control this much dark magic at a distance. With a determined yowl, McGonagall latched onto Green's coat.

Both of them disappeared into the agony and disorientation of a forced distance Apparition.

* * *

He was aware of the pain spearing through his scar before the shackles clamped around his wrists registered. Harry blinked, surprised that his vision was not more blurred – surprised that he was still wearing his glasses – and, with effort, forced a wall up around the pain. His link with Voldemort receded to a tingle that nevertheless allowed him to feel the Dark Lord's excitement.

Right. The Shrieking Shack. Malfoy.

Harry gave his arms an experimental tug, not surprised when he could only move them a bare few centimetres. There was a wall behind him, and Harry rested his head against it for the slight relief it offered as the cool contact eased some of the throbbing in his head. Now that he was feeling a little more aware, Harry took stock of his surroundings.

He was chained up in a large room of what appeared to be a house; he might have called it a living room, were it not for the sinister furnishings – the candles, the Dark artefacts, the runes scribed around his feet, and not least his chains. There were dark stains all over the floor, and Harry had the distinct impression that not many people left this room _living_. It was night, the same night he had been captured, perhaps, and the large windows gave no hint of their location. MacLeod was crumpled near the centre of the room, looking exactly as if someone had simply dropped him there. No one else was around at the moment.

This, Harry Potter decided, was not a good situation. In fact, it contained disturbing similarities to a certain graveyard he had seen in fourth year. He tugged at the chains again. Idly, he stretched out a foot and rubbed at the runes on the floor with his toe, certain that whatever they did would be bad for him.

"That won't do you any good, boy. Stop fidgeting."

Harry looked up at that cold, arrogant voice, and watched the two Death Eaters approach him. They had their masks in place, but Harry recognised the icy drawl of Lucius Malfoy, and could probably make out his Potions professor's dark eyes glaring at him even without seeing the man. He'd had enough experience in classes.

The taller pureblood tapped his wand against his thigh in a slow, rhythmic gesture. "Do you know, boy, whose wands you held?"

At one time, Harry might have been frightened at that tone, and would have answered with bluster and anger, bravery held to the front like a shield. But fifth year had tempered him, and sixth year tempered him more. He was not frightened of Lucius Malfoy; the man might hurt him, but would never kill him or even seriously injure him, not when Voldemort had claimed his life. And so Harry answered simply and, perhaps, unwisely. "Yes."

Malfoy's voice tightened with fury. He flicked his wand, once, and Harry tensed against the sudden lash of pain across his back. "Then it is fitting that you should know what use you are put to this night. Our Lord has deemed you an appropriate price for his glory. When your sacrifice has been accepted, you will wish you had been left to me." He paused, and Harry took the moment to brace himself against what he knew was coming. "Until then, you are mine." He raised his wand.

Snape stepped forward. "Lucius."

The other Death Eater turned to face him for a moment, and lowered his wand. "It is true, you have suffered him enough these last years. You may have first redress, Severus." Somehow, he managed to make the words grudging and gracious at the same time.

Snape stepped forward, until he was directly in front of Harry. The Boy-Who-Lived gazed back at him, his expression as blank as he could make it. Harry was not foolish enough to believe that Snape could rescue him from this, not unless the man could get him out of these chains and carry him bodily past the anti-Apparition wards and the Death Eaters in the way, not to mention the Dark Lord lurking about somewhere. He only hoped that whatever his Potions professor was about to do would not hurt too much.

"Potter," Snape snarled. Facing him, Harry stared straight into black eyes, and imagined he saw a hint of regret there. The words that spiralled from Snape's lips then were in no language Harry recognised, twisting and guttural and deep, the very syllables trying to escape the confines given by lips and tongue, to turn itself into something different and wilder. Snape never lost control, and for one of the few times in his life, Harry appreciated the depth of skill that he held. Energy washed over Harry, soft and stinging and far colder than anything he had ever experienced before. The ice invaded his face, his lungs, his heart, his limbs, and the cold was replaced by a spreading numbness that enveloped him and left him floating without sensation. It was disturbing in its own right, though it seemed to do nothing else, and Harry looked at the obsidian eyes in confusion.

Even Malfoy seemed curious, for he asked, "What curse is that, Severus? I had not heard its like before."

Snape's voice was as dry and biting as it had ever been in class. "He will discover the effects soon enough. I am done, Lucius."

"Good. _Crucio._"

The curse hit, and Harry screamed and twisted and strained against his bonds. But . . . Harry's eyes were open, and he could see himself convulse and could hear his screams, and the pain was _not there_ and he could not feel his limbs. He felt detached, from the curse and from his body, and the numbness of Snape's spell did not leave him. As Malfoy held the curse long into the seconds when most casters would have been forced to stop, and he screamed until he was gasping for breath through a throat that sounded sore but he could not feel, Harry realised what Snape's spell had done, and he was grateful.

At last, Malfoy let up on the curse. The Gryffindor hung with his weight on his wrists, gasping for breath, and did not look up as more Death Eaters filed into the room. There was a pause; Voldemort entered, dark robes pulled around him like an emperor's cloak, and the last of Harry's carefully gathered calm shattered.


	8. Chapter 8

**Gheis**: Ff doesn't like us replying to reviews in the story, but if you (or anyone else, for that matter) provide me with an email, I'll be happy to answer any questions. :)

According to my severely atrophied recollection, there's nothing in canon about the origins of the Immortals (disregarding the second movie, which I never bothered watching. I balked at the video blurb). There's a distinct resemblance between my origins and Ellenar's origins in _Q Me?_, and you can blame me for reading something so perfect and immediately placing it into my mental picture of canon – for this fic, at least. I am contemplating two others, both crossovers, with significantly different Immortal origins. Or you can just agree that Luna is loony and no one will believe her anyway.

* * *

Crabbe and Goyle could cast the Cruciatus and cause pain. Lucius Malfoy could cast it and hold it until his victims harmed themselves in the overwhelming seizures. Voldemort's was much, much worse. There was malice in his curse, true hate that fuelled it with more power than any single one of his Death Eaters could achieve. And though his body was ice, a senseless lump he was no longer connected to, the pain that lanced through Harry's scar was not physical and could not be blocked. Numb with cold and the growing horror of watching his body react without his control to things he could not feel, the scar was the only sensation he knew. He fought against it, Occluded his mind with all the strength he had left, but could not block it completely out. And so he screamed at the hate pouring through the unwelcome link and writhed in the grips of the curse he did not suffer.

Harry's screams died away. He hung limply in the chains, gasping for breath; he did not have the ability, at that moment, to carry his own weight.

There was a disturbance in the centre of the room, behind Voldemort. The man – Demon – called MacLeod struggled to his feet, scowling fiercely. "Can't pick on someone your own size? Trying to compensate for something, Snakeface?"

The chilling laughter stopped abruptly; Voldemort lifted a hand to forestall the Death Eaters who stepped forward with wands raised at the insult. "You have something to say, Muggle?"

"Yeah." MacLeod stared into the glaring red eyes. If he was at all intimidated by the malice to be found there, he did not show it.

Horrified, Harry snapped his head up. "No, don't!" he cried. He'd hoped that the Muggle – Demon, whatever – was dead, unconscious, or at least had the presence of mind not to draw attention to himself. Taunting Voldemort only resulted in a slow and painful death.

He might as well not have spoken for all the notice MacLeod paid him. "Yeah," he repeated, and bared his teeth in a snarled grin. His accent broadened, smooth and silky and rasping against the ear. "You're ugly and a pervert. You're a coward too, or maybe you can't keep your filthy hands off little boys. You should take that stick of yours and put it-"

"_Crucio!_"

MacLeod's mouth snapped shut. He twitched, and gave a kind of shiver that travelled from head to toe. Then he grinned. "Ouch."

Mouth open, Harry stared at him in astonishment, forgetting his own predicament for a moment. It was impossible. Voldemort could cast the Cruciatus with more power than any man alive, and yet MacLeod had barely blinked. Despite previous evidence of the Demon's resistance to magic, Harry could not help but disbelieve his own eyes.

"Impressive," Voldemort hissed. "For a Muggle, you are strong. You object to my treatment of Potter? Than you shall have your turn. _Imperio_."

Harry had a bad feeling about this. He watched as MacLeod stiffened and his face became blank.

"Ah, good, good." Voldemort glided towards the still man. "Now, my little Muggle, approach the boy you are so fond of."

MacLeod turned, slowly, to face Voldemort. His expression twisted and he lunged at the Dark Lord, shouting something in a voice that was in no way MacLeod's. Voldemort reared back, startled, and shouted, "_Impedimenta!_" In other circumstances, Harry might have been stunned that the Dark Lord had just used a schoolyard hex. But it worked; under the overpowered spell, MacLeod slowed, and stopped.

Except that it wasn't MacLeod. The features were the same, the body still short and wiry, but the expression on that face was alien, as if the body was an ill-fitting costume, and his voice had changed. It was deeper, rougher, speaking an entirely different language. Harry thought he recognised some phrases spoken by Parvati when she was very, very angry.

"What is this?" Harry looked at Voldemort and gasped as pain lanced through his scar. Voldemort was furious. "You dare resist me? _Imperio!_"

The biting, vituperative babble of words cut off abruptly. There was a moment of absolute silence; the Death Eaters were an unmoving audience, as shocked and fascinated as Harry with the turn of the events, and wise enough not to interfere, though some of them fidgeted and fiddled with their wands. Slowly, with building volume, MacLeod began to laugh. It was a mad cackle, cruel and contemptuous, well matched to the insane eyes.

One of the Death Eaters leapt forward, no longer able to restrain herself. "You dare to laugh at the Dark Lord!" she shrieked. Harry recognised Bellatrix Lestrange. "_Crucio!_"

The laughter only increased. "Oh, that feels good. You want to play, little girl?" His voice was now hoarse and cruel. There was a distinct Russian flavour to his words, and a lewd inflection Harry could not imagine being present in the original MacLeod. One hand shot out and grasped her by the neck. With a sharp tug, Bellatrix was pulled off balance and into the arms of a man who seemed harder and taller than the body he possessed. She was not a weak woman by any means, but the physical attack took her by surprise, and she made no effort to escape. "Hello, pretty." He caught the startled Death Eater in a bruising kiss, and snapped her neck.

The absolute silence of shock met him as he let Bellatrix fall to the ground. "I have something to say. It's better to burn out than to fade away!" He spun around with a mad grin.

They could do little more than stare at the man doing a jig over Bellatrix Lestrange's body. After a moment, fifteen wands rose to point at him.

"Stop." Voldemort's voice was even more sibilant than usual as he waved his followers back. "What is this?" he asked, sounding more curious than angry. "Who are you?"

Several of the Death Eaters turned to stare at their Lord, amongst them Lucius Malfoy, and Harry cringed at the rage he saw glittering in the aristocrat's pale eyes.

The man stopped and grinned at him. "I," he said with impressive arrogance, "am the Kurgan. And you are meat." His tongue waggled in a disgustingly suggestive manner. "I've won!" he cried out, and laughed again. The triumph and insanity in the sound was enough to drown out all others.

Voldemort raised his wand in synchronicity with the fury sparkling in his red eyes. Harry thought that he might use the Cruciatus, or perhaps he was incensed enough to use the Killing Curse. People, wizards and Muggles alike, had died for less provocation than this crazy, insane man offered. But Voldemort displayed more restraint than Harry imagined he possessed, or perhaps more curiosity, for he cast instead the subtlest of the Unforgivables.

"_Imperio_."

That mad, compelling laughter was cut off so abruptly his tongue must have been bitten. The expression that slid over the youthful face was profoundly different in temper and bearing. The jaw was clenched in defiance and anger, the wide eyes wary. He held now the marks of a cornered animal.

"Do you have anything to say?" Voldemort asked silkily.

The man spat something that sounded Latin, but too fast and too dialectical for Harry to make out. There was something in the voice, in the way that MacLeod held himself even as his gaze darted to and fro in search of escape, that was decidedly feminine.

Voldemort looked at his followers, a gleam in his eyes that Harry could not define. "Do any of you have an explanation for how this lowly Muggle is able to defy my Imperius?" There was a warning in that tone, a fatal trap for those who sprung it.

"My lord, if I may."

Harry started as Snape stepped forward and bowed. He had known his professor was there, of course, but had forgotten him in the silent Death Eater audience.

Snape continued, ignoring his student's surprise. "There is a Muggle disease of the mind, my lord, through which one body contains multiple selves. There is usually a dominant personality and several lesser subpersonalities, though the number varies for each individual."

"Severus," Voldemort purred, drawing out the hiss in the name, "Always the academic. Do continue this fascinating line of conjecture."

The dark Potions Master barely faltered. His voice was cool and detached. "My lord. Imperio suppresses the consciousness of the victim, allowing the caster to insert his own will. In the cases of such mentally crowded subjects as this one, there is not only the consciousness of the dominant personality that needs to be suppressed, but also those of each subpersonality. Therefore multiple Imperios must be cast until the entire consciousness has been suppressed."

Harry was impressed. Given that he had witnessed evidence of the Demon's inhumanity alongside his professor, the line of misdirection Snape was sowing was entirely plausible and, for all he knew, true – in other circumstances. He had known that Snape was an accomplished liar – he was, after all, a spy and the Slytherin Head of House – but he had never before seen him in full action.

"Intriguing. How did you discover this?"

Snape gave the barest of shrugs. "The phenomenon occurred to Lucius once. I was curious, and investigated."

"It is true, my lord," Malfoy spoke from his position. His voice was entirely neutral, displaying none of the emotion Harry had glimpsed earlier.

Voldemort laughed, a hissing, sibilant sound that sent chills down Harry's spine. "Severus, you have always been curious." He turned considering red pupils on MacLeod. "I may let this one live for a while. He will make a most amusing pet. Meanwhile . . . _Imperio!_"

And so it went for three successive curses. Each one produced a wildly different personality, though all of them held a fierce anger, a ferocious defiance. Despite himself, Harry could not help but feel a little awed; some wizards could cast and hold an Imperius, less could hold two. It was unheard of to hold three concurrent Imperii, and Voldemort was holding many more, on one person though it was. That showed strength of will and magic that only Dumbledore might counter. After each curse, Voldemort asked the man a question, though he received no answer other than sharp epithets in a variety of languages.

At last a curse took effect and the man stood silently, head bowed and expression blank.

"Who are you?" Voldemort asked, expression smug and gloating.

The man raised his head slowly. Unlike his face, the eyes were clear and knowing. This was but one more personality. "I am Nakano," he said, and though he spoke Japanese, the others understood him perfectly through means that were not their own. "You should not have disturbed us. There can be only one. _Mac Leo'id!_" After the shouted name – a battle cry, a summoning – eyelids closed over calm eyes, and the man was gone.

The wizards blinked as the Muggle simply vanished from their sight. An instant later, two thumps caught their attention and they whirled to see two black-robed bodies at the back of the room fall to the ground. A moment of frozen shock allowed the swift Muggle to snap the neck of another Death Eater. Then the gathering raised wands almost as one, and multiple Killing Curses hit MacLeod.

He dropped like a rock.

They all stared at the motionless body at Voldemort's feet, then raised fearful gazes to the Dark Lord.

"A pity. He was amusing," he murmured through pursed, bloodless lips. The look he cast upon MacLeod was contemplative. Shaking off his disappointment, he turned to Harry. "Now that that little distraction is gone . . ." He smiled.

Harry glared at him.

"Do you know why you are here, Potter?" Voldemort said, and his tone was almost saccharine. "Oh, of course, you left the protection of the school and was unfortunate enough to land in Lucius' hands. But do you know what your role in my upcoming triumph is?"

Motionless, the Boy-Who-Lived pressed his lips together. He refused to give Voldemort the satisfaction of a response. Whatever Voldemort was planning, it would end – or begin – with Harry's death, and he was not about to shout or plead or scream, was not about to show anger or false bravado, or say anything that might reveal any fear. He was Gryffindor, but he was Slytherin enough to have learnt what signs Voldemort took for weakness.

Undeterred, the Dark Lord reached out with one pale, thin hand, and stroked Harry's cheek. _That_, Harry felt, and he gasped at the pain engendered by the physical contact with Voldemort's hate. He closed his mouth tight, trapping any other sound he might make, and the metallic taste of blood flooded his mouth.

"Soon," Voldemort purred, studying the smear of blood on his fingertips with detached interest. "Soon, he will be here. The greatest destructive force this world has ever seen. A Demon bathed in the blood of his enemies. A Demon, beholden to the Slytherin line. I have called him, and you are my offering to him. All the most powerful Demons require sacrifice, regardless of their loyalties." Voldemort stroked his cheek again, wiping away the blood that seeped in a steady stream from his scar. "Ah, Potter, I regret that you will not see the height of my glory. You will not, I fear, enjoy your time as my ally's plaything."

Harry wondered for an instant if he had somehow become a Demon-magnet while at Hogwarts. The thought was drowned by Voldemort's mock sorrowful tone, by the smugness he felt through the scar. His recent resolve to ignore Voldemort's taunts dissolved away in a flash of fear-wrought anger. Opening his mouth, Harry prepared to deliver the worst epithets he knew – most of those learnt a few minutes ago listening to MacLeod – but never got a chance to shout his defiance.

A Death Eater came tumbling head over heels into the room. He did not rise when he came to rest, but lay groaning and clutching an arm that bled copiously. The space where he had been standing guard was occupied by another. A long, thin sword trailed from one hand, the tip edged in red. The newcomer's eyes were hard, his expression set, but his voice congenial.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

It was the voice that Harry recognized, though the man's manner was so completely different to the mild, affable Muggle Studies professor he remembered and had been so suspicious of – but not, apparently, suspicious enough. He stared at Green, feeling curiously numb, in spirit and body both. He could not feel much more shock now, not after MacLeod's odd behaviour, the deaths of four inner circle Death Eaters, including the woman who had killed his godfather, and the appearance of yet another oddity. It seemed he was not the only one overwhelmed, for no one moved, and Snape had stiffened, standing so rigidly still that robes accustomed to billowing as he walked lay perfectly flat.

Voldemort was the first to recover. "You dare!" he hissed. "You dare intrude uninvited into my domain!"

"Not quite," the newcomer replied mildly. He strode forward, dropping his sword as he did so, and it came to rest with a clatter beside the still body of MacLeod. Now that Harry looked closely at it, he thought it seemed familiar. Green stepped over the obstructing corpses as if they were of no consequence. "I am not uninvited. If I'm not mistaken, you are the one who called me."

Voldemort seemed confused for a moment. Then he smiled. Harry winced at the burst of happiness that travelled through their link. Given what the Dark Lord had just told him, Harry really did not like that emotion.

"You are Methos," Voldemort said.

"Yes." The man nodded, and though his hands were empty, he did not look less dangerous.

"You are Slytherin's teacher."

Murmurs swept through the remaining Death Eaters, quelled by a glare from the Dark Lord.

"Yes," Green – Methos - said again. His eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"

For an instant Voldemort looked taken aback, almost crestfallen. The emotion faded quickly into happiness. "I am Lord Voldemort," he declared. "The heir of Slytherin."

"Are you really?" Methos murmured. His eyes swept over the room, taking in the clump of Death Eaters and the boy chained to the wall without changing expression. He looked at the runes laid around Harry's feet, an eyebrow rising as he appeared to read the precisely scrawled inscription. "Why have you called me?"

"To offer an alliance. You are Slytherin's teacher. I am Slytherin's heir. Is it not fitting that we should join together and rule the world in a manner befitting Slytherin and Pureblood ways?" Voldemort's tone was coaxing and fervent, his red eyes full of triumph.

An angry yowl echoed through the room as a small creature streaked towards Methos. He kicked it aside with barely a glance. The cat landed in a heap a few metres away, shaking her head as if to clear it of the collision with the ground. Harry could only stare as he recognised the somewhat bedraggled Animagus form of Professor McGonagall. The cat scrambled to her feet and hissed. Wormtail squeaked, stumbling back into those standing behind him as she dashed through the Death Eaters on her way to confronting Methos.

"Someone catch that infernal beast," Voldemort hissed.

Every wand in the room was raised, but only two had a clear shot. Snape spelled a quick cage – and moved, seemingly by accident, into the path of Lucius Malfoy's curse. He screamed, swallowed the sound before it had barely left his throat, and crashed to the ground, wrapped from head to foot in black thorny vines. He hissed as the impact drove the long spines deeper into his flesh. "Lucius . . ."

"Severus." The pale-haired Death Eater raised his wand to cast the counter-curse.

"Leave him," Voldemort commanded, amusement in his red eyes. "Perhaps this will teach our dear Potions Master to be less clumsy."

Malfoy lowered his wand with the barest of shrugs. "Try not to move," he advised in his cold drawl, but Harry thought he caught a hint of apology in the glance thrown at Snape.

Throughout it all, Methos read the runes again, ignoring the Death Eaters scrambling back into position. His attention was beginning to make Harry nervous, and the Gryffindor wished he knew what the symbols meant. Methos turned back to Voldemort with a small smile. "You were saying?"

His cavalier tone should have infuriated Voldemort, but it seemed the Dark Lord was too excited to take offence. "An alliance, Lord Methos. You are as great as I. Together we will lay the world at our feet."

Someone gasped. Harry thought it was a Death Eater, perhaps Snape still bound in thorns. He caught a slight movement, but when he looked, MacLeod's body was as still as anyone caught by the Killing Curse.

Methos sounded amused. "I've already had the world at my feet. I grew bored of it. You know the name I took as Salazar's teacher. Do you know another I once held?"

"Yes." The force of the Dark Lord's exultation split open Harry's scar; he tried to blink the thin stream of blood out of his eyes. "'And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.' You are he. The fourth rider."

Methos smiled. It was one of the most frightening things Harry had ever seen. "Someone's had a proper Christian upbringing." His tone was lightly mocking.

Voldemort's eyes flashed. "Through no fault of mine!" he hissed. "Nevertheless, the worthless Muggles have taught me that even they remember your glory."

Shrugging lightly as if to say that all of that was inconsequential, never mind that some of the Death Eaters were now looking at their Lord in puzzlement, Methos said, "What do you offer me?"

"My greatest enemy," Voldemort replied. "Harry Potter. The famous Boy-Who-Lived." He spat out the title with distaste.

Harry met the dispassionate gold-tainted green gaze with his own emerald one, blazing with fear and defiance. Voldemort had hinted at tortures, but in those eyes Harry saw nothing but death, and it frightened him. All of his enemies had always felt something towards him, be it anger or hate or contempt, but Methos looked at him as if he were nothing, not even a bug, and could be squished as easily. This man, this Demon that had posed as a professor, would, Harry thought, feel nothing when killing him. Nothing at all. It shook him as Voldemort's threats never had.

"A boy?" Methos asked. Something lay under his words, a danger that existed not only for Harry, but for everything else in the room. "You offer me a mere boy? He is nothing to me."

An oppressive feeling was building in the air; thunder rumbled outside. The high, dirt-streaked windows flashed with lightning.

"What would you have of me?" Voldemort spread his arms. "Ask, and I will give it, if you will join with me."

"I am Death." Methos' voice deepened. Silky, dark, it sent a shiver down Harry's spine. "I will take what you have given me. MacLeod, rise."

MacLeod did as he was bid in one fluid motion, the forgotten katana in his hand. A cry of astonishment and fear rose up among the Death Eaters. The cat yowled, and Snape looked on with grim resignation. Even Voldemort's eyes widened with shock. Then he smiled, exulting in the power of his newest ally. Only Harry did not react, preoccupied as he was with dealing with the side effects of Voldemort's emotions. MacLeod's storm grey eyes swept the room. His grin was dark and vicious.

"And," Methos continued, "I will take what you have not given me. Sacrifice is made of things that you value, or it has no meaning. Give me your followers."

Without hesitation, Voldemort said, "Take them."

The Death Eaters stirred uneasily as Methos drew a broadsword out of his coat. He said something in a language that none of the wizards understood. MacLeod nodded once.

Then they were moving, stepping in opposite directions with the hypnotising, deadly grace of predators. The Death Eaters had barely enough time to form a defence despite the warning, disconcerted as they were by MacLeod's return to life and their Lord's betrayal. They were all members of Voldemort's inner circle, powerful in their own right, the last holdover of Voldemort's original cadre. But they had little defence against the whirlwind of steel and death that swept through them.

The spells they brought to bear on the two terrible, deadly creatures covered the entire range of offensive magic at their disposal on such short notice. They were moving targets, though, faster than the Death Eaters expected, and the spells hit other Death Eaters as often as not. Those that landed on their intended targets did little damage. None of them had time enough to gather the focus necessary for the Killing Curse. They were panic-stricken, on the verge of a route with nowhere to run, and without nearly enough presence of mind to defend against the two swords that felled them. The last to fall to MacLeod's blade was Lucius Malfoy, and he died with such fury in his eyes that Harry thought it possible he too might shake off death to extract revenge. At last, the only Death Eater left alive in the room was Snape, unable to mount any attack or defence, and both MacLeod and Methos dismissed him for the moment.

Methos came to a stop before Voldemort, who had watched the slaughter of his most faithful followers with a calm smile. He was breathing fast, and a sheen of sweat lined his brow. His sword was held ready, distinctly threatening in the way it was angled towards the Dark Lord. He was showered with blood, more others than his own, and appeared not to notice the wounds that closed with tiny licks of disturbingly familiar blue lightning.

"You cannot kill me," Voldemort said. He looked confidently into green-gold eyes that were blazing with malice. "I am immortal." His tone was utterly complacent, and certainty in the power and faith in his new ally leaked through the scar.

"Is that so?" Methos circled Voldemort, sword steady. "Yes, I can feel it. You have made yourself one of us, somehow. There's a touch of Quickening in you."

Harry felt his head near split open with the force of the Dark Lord's exultation. MacLeod, who had retreated to a far wall while the effects of the curses laid on him healed, raised his head. Thunder roared above them.

"If you are one of us, then you must obey our rules," Methos said, coming around to face Voldemort again.

"What rules can bind the immortal?" Voldemort asked.

It was a rhetorical question, but Methos answered anyway. "There is one," he replied, a slow smile building. It was not a nice expression by any means. "One very important rule."

"What is that?"

"_There can be only one._" And, while Voldemort blinked in confusion and irritation, Methos swung the sword at the Dark Lord's neck.

The Dark Lord didn't even flinch before his body crumpled, headless, to the ground. Snape cried out in shock, and Harry just stared at the bloody remains of his nemesis. His scar had felt the killing blow, and he was stunned with pain. Then he blinked as a black mist rose from the body. It reminded him of the wraith he had fought in his first year, of the essence of Voldemort before the Dark Lord had found another body. It swirled once around the room, then flew towards the exit.

Methos' eyes widened, and he snarled. "Oh, no you don't."

Lightning crackled all around them, and Harry realized that the storm was not a natural one. It was oppressive, closed in all about them; somehow it was stopping Voldemort's spirit from escaping. The dark wraith flinched from the windows, then darted towards Harry.

"No!" Methos snarled again. "You are mine!"

Harry had barely enough time to shrink back in alarm before a bolt of blue lightning struck the wraith. It trembled, bulged around the middle, and then scattered in all directions, as if the shadow that comprised it was shredding apart. In place of the dark wraith was an amorphous blue glow.

Lightning crackled all over the room now. The windows shattered, raining glass splinters on the people inside. Methos raised his sword above his head in both hands, feet apart and head thrown back. Bolt after bolt of lightning struck him; the essence of Voldemort rammed into him again and again until he was thrumming with energy. Methos was screaming as his body shuddered under the onslaught. The combination of pain and ecstasy was sickening to hear.

At last, just when Harry thought he could bear to watch no more, and the building seemed one more blow away from falling on them, the storm ended. Methos lowered his sword. He was breathing hard, raggedly, and seemed on the point of collapse, but there was triumph in him, a sense of victory, of power. He looked up, met MacLeod's steady gaze. The other stepped forward.

Harry looked around dazedly. He was chained to the wall, alone with his two incapacitated professors, in a room littered with the bodies of Death Eaters, drenched in their blood, wrecked by the force of Voldemort's death. And with them were the two Demons, approaching the three survivors of their work.


	9. Chapter 9

MacLeod squatted on his heels in front of the cage. Storm grey eyes stared into the tabby cat's defiant gaze. The katana rested across his knees, blood soaking into the weave of his jeans. He paid it no mind.

"Hello, kitty." His voice was soft and dangerous.

The cat hissed at him and backed into the far corner of the tiny cage. Behind the Demon, Harry thrashed in his chains, suddenly renewing his efforts to gain freedom. MacLeod glanced back at him, and then smiled at the cat. It was far from being a nice smile.

"Now, why would the boy care what I do to you?" All traces of amusement fled his voice. "You've taken a Clan Oath to destroy me, McGonagall. If I'm smart I'll kill you now before you take another shot at me. I don't leave enemies at my back."

"No!" Harry yelled. He jerked his chains to no avail. "No, don't! Please, you can't!"

Methos stepped over a sodden black-robed body and grabbed Harry's arm in a vice-like grip. "Quiet," he hissed. Green-gold eyes were intent on MacLeod. "Don't interfere. I know MacLeod; it'll be alright." He paused. "I think."

Harry flinched away from him, wary of the bloodied broadsword and the carnage he had witnessed, wary of the raw magic that crackled still under Methos' skin. "You – Voldemort called you D-death." Wide, frightened emerald eyes looked up at him.

"It was another age, child," said Methos in a tone meant to reassure. "I wouldn't worry about it." He nodded towards the others. "Quiet."

The tabby cat was yowling her defiance.

"Listen to me, witch," said MacLeod. "I've no problem with killing you if you cross me, but I'm not in the habit of offing old women who aren't much of a threat. You wouldn't be any if it weren't for that goddamn sword. I've enough trouble with headhunters without a bloody compass with me at north lying around. Rescind the Oath and destroy the sword. Swear that the McGonagalls will never try to harm me and mine, and I will swear the same. What do you say?" He raised his sword then, even as Harry cried out again, and brought it down on one corner of the cage. The sharp blade sheared through magic-wrought bars, and one entire side fell away. Standing, MacLeod took a few steps back. His katana was held snapped down one leg in a position that seemed non-threatening.

The cat looked unblinking at him for a long moment. She had no doubt that he could lift that blade faster than thought, though he had taken himself just far enough away that she could react to whatever move he made. Slowly, cautiously, she edged forward out of the cage. An instant later McGonagall stood, hair askew, robes rumpled, wand raised defensively. MacLeod's eyes narrowed and he shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, but he did not lift his katana.

"You've killed so many people," she said, her voice hoarse. A large purple bruise decorated the side of her head. It was all she could do to remain standing after a self-transfiguration forced too soon after her head injury. "You'll kill many more."

His eyes hardened. "It's the Game. There's no way out of it except death."

"We are not your sport!"

"It isn't sport; it's survival. And you wand-wavers aren't a part of it. I'll kill none of you who doesn't try to kill me."

"You killed my brother." Her voice was steady now, and hard.

MacLeod frowned. "He tried to kill me."

McGonagall hesitated. It was true; she had seen the claymore's memories. But MacLeod was a Demon who had haunted the McGonagalls and the Highland clans for centuries. "You have killed more than your share of my clan." Her voice was rough; she could not keep the emotion out of it.

Again that frown, that hard gaze allowing no regret, no apology. "_They_ tried to kill me."

No. She did not want to think about that now – could not afford to lay blame and untangle past history now. Could not afford to ignore it. She glanced around them, at the bodies that lay strewn about, and her gaze came to rest on the Death Eaters, on Voldemort's corpse. Her shoulders sagged slightly. It was clear, too clear, to the Demon and to her, that she wanted to believe him. She didn't want to fight MacLeod here. He was too powerful now, and she weak and conflicted. Her Oath urged her to attack. Her instincts opposed it.

There was a hint of desperation in her voice. "I can't trust your word."

"You should," Methos broke in softly. "MacLeod here is one of the most honourable men alive. The only one more honourable is his kinsman. Without the magic of your Wizard Oaths, you mortals will forget what you swore. He _never_ will."

McGonagall stared at the Demon who had destroyed Voldemort's body and soul.

"Trusting me isn't the issue," MacLeod said after sparing a glare for Methos. "_You_ can trust that I will do what I must to survive. _I_ can only trust that it is safe to leave you alive after you have given me your Oath."

"A Clan Oath is sworn in blood," McGonagall said reluctantly. "It is not so easy to rescind."

MacLeod tensed. "If that's the way you want it." His soft accented voice was tinged with regret, even as his eyes went flat and vicious.

Eyes widening in alarm, McGonagall took a step back, knocking over the remains of her cage. But he did not yet attack, and she did not dare raise her wand until he made a move.

Methos was moving; he had released Harry and glided forward, careful to keep a safe distance away from MacLeod and to never move out of his sight, or between him and McGonagall. His gaze never left MacLeod's, and McGonagall realised that he, too, considered the other Demon the greatest threat. "There is a way," he offered. "There is always a way, even with blood oaths. A price must be paid equal and thrice that originally offered, but it _is_ possible."

"Minerva." The hoarse gasp came from the side: Snape had finally recovered from the shock of his master's death transmitted through the Dark Mark. He lay immobile in the embrace of the dark thorns. "Do not trust him. He is Death." The dark Potions Master was staring at Methos with undisguised horror.

"Well, well." Methos stalked towards him, smiling amiably. If the broadsword slung casually over one shoulder was ignored, he would seem the perfect image of the friendly young Muggle Studies professor the wizards had thought him to be. "What have we here? A spy. A traitor, but to whom?" He squatted beside Snape, much as MacLeod had done a moment before to the cat. "And you have the temerity to talk to me of trust?"

Snape stared at him with an open defiance rare for him. Fear was stark in his black eyes. "Fools trust Demons."

Methos chuckled. The low, sinister sound caused the wizard to tense visibly. Fresh blood oozed between the thorns. "Oh, I'm not a demon," he said. Silky smooth, deep, his voice sent shivers down their spines. "Everything your dark lord said, I've done." His voice rose. "I was Death, yes, Death on a horse. I killed. I enjoyed killing." He laughed, the sound too manic to be comfortable. "I cut a swathe across the land so wide the memory terrifies whole religions four millennia later.

"But I'm not a demon. MacLeod, he's one of the strongest and deadliest of us all, but he's _nothing_ like a demon. I've met one, you see, just a short time ago, right before it was defeated by that one's kinsman. Its name is Ahriman."

Snape, having lost his shock at the green-gold eyes burning furiously into his with a bloodlust and unholy fire, looked puzzled – and then comprehension dawned. It was lost to McGonagall, who had not studied the Dark Arts as extensively as her colleague. But she did not like the expression on his face.

Before Harry could gather the courage to shape his question, Methos continued, "Ahriman, the demon who manifests every thousand years to devour the world . . . and that is where the main difference lies.

"You're right, wizard. You can't trust a demon. Demons seek to destroy _everything_ in the most painful way possible. Demons would not be having this conversation with you. If I were the slightest bit interested in bringing about the next Apocalypse – tricky and rather pointless, since all the Horsemen ever really did was pillage and plunder for a thousand years – if I was interested, I would have killed you long ago. We are not demons. We are only Immortals."

Methos smiled, back to being friendly. "The choice is really quite simple. We can play nice and make up, or we can find out who's got the better long pointy stick. Whaddya say? Me, I'd just as soon go home and have a beer."

"I've seen you," Snape hissed. There was desperation in his eyes. "Slytherin's teacher. I _can't_ trust you with–" He snapped his teeth shut around the rest of the words before they spilled out, but McGonagall knew them anyway. She had known him for years, and come to recognise the one law he lived by: never reveal weakness. Never expose the things you care about.

"And this from a member of his own House." Amused green-gold eyes smiled at him. "All I really taught Salazar was how to survive in a world burning witches while those same witches were busy killing each other. It's a shame that your view of him has become so warped. Salazar never was the puritanical Muggle-killer you all believe him to be. If he were, he never could have befriended the others. Fanatics don't survive for very long, and I taught Salazar very well."

"What about the basilisk? It was _killing_ Muggleborns!" Harry exclaimed in disbelief.

Methos shrugged elegantly. "I can't answer that," he replied. "I suspect there was much more going on in his last days at your school than you know. I've a few of his diaries you can read, if you like." Before they could process that astounding offer, Methos turned back to Snape. His voice, when he spoke, was gentle and almost sad. "You haven't seen me. You've seen Professor Adam Green, and a shadow of the monster that was Death. You've even seen a tiny bit of Methos, which is the closest anyone ever gets. But you have not seen and will never see _me_."

MacLeod snorted loudly, and Methos sent him a tiny abashed grin. Catching the green-gold eyes with his own black ones, Snape stared hard at him. The flash of lightning turned Methos' irises blue, and he smiled as Snape cried out in shock and pain.

"I suggest you don't try that again," Methos said pleasantly. "Our Highlander is relatively young. I, on the other hand, have had a _long_ time to perfect my mental shields."

"Don't get a big head, old man," MacLeod growled. "McGonagall, give me an answer now. Either swear to rescind the damn Oath and bloody well leave me alone, or we'll settle this right here." His patience clearly worn thin, the others could see the threat of violence hovering just beneath the surface in the set of his jaws. His eyes were narrowed to burning slits, passionless and vicious as a cougar's. The man was a predator barely leashed. Harry had stilled in his chains, afraid of doing anything that might set the sword-wielding Immortals upon his professors.

McGonagall was silent for a very long time. Then, slowly, she lowered her wand. That single motion cost her. The Oath pounded against her head, her heart, her soul. She could not afford to give in to it. Not here, not now. Not with her student and colleague trapped, and she the only thing between them and death. "Swear you will not harm anyone at Hogwarts."

"Only if I am not attacked first," MacLeod said, voice tight.

"Only in life-threatening situations," McGonagall capitulated.

"Not counting him." MacLeod jerked his head.

McGonagall hesitated, despite the knowledge that she wanted the other Immortal far from Hogwarts as well.

"It's alright," Methos reassured her. "Not even his kinsman will ever get Connor MacLeod to swear peace with another Immortal."

She stared at Conchobar, at the strange, bloodied creature that stood waiting for her decision. He was dangerous, this thing that looked like a man, hard and unyielding, more lethal than the blade he carried. Minerva McGonagall knew that she would die the moment she refused his offer. And she was afraid, as any sane person would be, of this ancient Demon who offered no hand in truce but rather held himself in abeyance, surrounded by the aftermath of his violence. She was afraid, because he was not _trying_ to look dangerous, was not trying to threaten her, but did anyway. He made no move that could be construed as a precursor to an attack; he did not move at all. Standing with blood on his clothes and blood on his blade, surrounded by the fallen bodies of his victory, he was a spectre of a dark and vicious past, a remnant stepping from the shadows of history. Minerva was afraid.

But fear did not make her back down, or keep her from battle. Minerva McGonagall, warrior in her own right, head of a House that valued courage above ambition, knowledge and loyalty, hesitated, not because she was afraid of what he might do if she refused, but because she was afraid of what he might do if she accepted. She would be bound by her word; she would have no choice, for he demanded a Wizarding Oath, and Oaths allowed no leeway beyond what Methos claimed – and McGonagall refused to think of that.

Connor would have no such bonds on him. She would be relying on his honour, and what honour could a centuries old Demon who had spent his life in bloodshed have? She had only Methos' word for his character – and again, that thought did not bear thinking about. He had generations of dead McGonagall chieftains behind him, and in his favour she had only the fact that he had not yet killed her colleague or her student.

It was a large factor. It was the sole reason she was even considering his words. Had he made a single move towards them, had the Demons raised their weapons against them, she would have attacked without hesitation, regardless of her current weakness and imminent death. But they had not. They had killed the Death Eaters, and the one had swallowed the Dark Lord's soul, and they had not killed the three who remained helpless to their swords, and it had confused her enough for her to listen.

Severus was watching her. His expression was grim, his eyes dark with pain, and McGonagall realised that, no matter what happened next, he did not expect to survive. Already he lay in a spreading pool of his own blood; if he were not released soon, Lucius Malfoy's spell would kill him. The thought grieved her. Disdaining to acknowledge her distress on his behalf, Snape met her eyes. He could offer no advice, but what he gave her was much more valuable – through their connected gaze, Snape cast a soundless _Legilimens_ with his waning strength, and sent to her all the knowledge he held on Conchobar: the details of the earlier conflict, the results of the interrogation he had attempted. The third-hand memories were somewhat hazy and lacking in precision, but they were still enough to send her reeling.

Also watching her was Harry. Hanging in chains, dirty and bruised and pale, the boy who was one of her most troublesome and dear students was dwarfed by the magnitude of the destruction that had occurred in the room. Emerald eyes pleaded with her, and McGonagall saw that he was afraid – but afraid for her, and not of the Demon she faced.

"Professor," he said suddenly. "Professor, he saved my life."

All eyes turned to him, save Conchobar's.

Harry licked his lips. "It was when Crabbe and Goyle died. I was careless, and they'd caught me, and- and they were torturing me. He stopped them. He didn't have to, but he did." He gazed at her, emerald eyes expressive as always in his desire for her to agree, to stop the feud with the Demon – to _live_. The Boy-Who-Lived knew as well as she who would likely emerge victorious from a battle between witch and Immortal.

"Is that true?" McGonagall demanded of Connor.

He nodded, once, face inscrutable.

It was all she had, all he could – or would – give her. She made her decision then, hoping fervently it was the right one. The last McGonagall chieftain looked the Demon of the MacLeods in the eye, and said, "As we have discussed, so do I swear."

The power in her words cracked across the room like a thunderclap, felt but not heard. Braced as she was, the clash of two conflicting Oaths very nearly drove Minerva McGonagall to her knees. Her vision darkened, the air turned cold and sharp in her lungs, her wand burned in her hand. Her magical core shuddered under the stress, twisting inside her, warping so that she hardly knew what was up and what down, or who she was and where.

"Professor!"

The voice was far away, it seemed, and familiar. It stirred her weakening consciousness, filled her with a sense of urgency for which she could not remember the cause.

"Professor, are you alright?"

She recognised it now: one of her cubs, a young lion who evoked her protective instincts and drove her to cling to awareness with all her will. For his sake.

Her smile was thin, but as reassuring as she could make it. "I am fine, Mr Potter."

MacLeod nodded, the movement abrupt and short. He stepped back a few paces, increasing the physical distance between himself and everyone else in the room.

* * *

"Well." Methos rose to his feet and smiled brightly at the Highlander. "Now that that's all settled, what say we all go for a beer? I'm parched."

"Holy ground," MacLeod rasped. The strain in his voice had, if anything, increased.

The smile faded from Methos' face. He sighed, and hurt flashed across his expression. "I'm not going to fight you, Highlander. Haven't I proven that in the last few days?"

"_Holy ground_, Methos." The feral light had not left his eyes, and his body trembled with tension. Fine droplets of sweat stood out on his brow.

Methos stared at him. His eyes widened with surprise and alarm, seeing something the others could not. "Holy ground," he agreed. "As soon as possible. Dear Minnie, if you would be so kind?" His gaze never left the other Immortal.

Keeping a wary eye on MacLeod, McGonagall asked, "Severus?"

"I am well enough," the wizard replied through clenched teeth. "Now that the wards are down, the Aurors shall be here soon, in any case. I would rather not greet them."

McGonagall nodded. With a few words and gestures she freed Snape, though the effort of using her abused magic caused her enough pain that she had to hold herself still a long moment while it subsided. She turned her wand on Harry, but before she had gotten halfway through the freeing spell he screamed, thrashing in his chains. McGonagall stopped immediately. "Mr Potter?"

Looking as surprised as she sounded, Harry said, "I'm alright. It didn't hurt. I– I don't know why I did that."

Snape made a noise in the back of his throat as he collected his wand and climbed carefully to his feet. "My doing, Mr Potter." Keeping a wary distance away from the waiting Immortals, he performed a series of cancelling charms on Harry before setting him free. The boy fell to his knees; he tried to rub the circulation back into his hands, but his movements were made clumsy by numbed limbs. Snape reholstered his wand, ignoring the multitude of punctures on his body that still wept blood, and pulled an empty potions vial from his sodden robes. He approached the Highlander as one would a dangerous animal, slowly and without making any sudden or large moves. He stopped when the storm-cold eyes narrowed further.

"You both need to touch this," said Snape.

Neither Immortal moved.

"It is an emergency portkey to my quarters in Hogwarts. From there we may go to the Friar's chapel. No one will attack us in Hogwarts, and the chapel is consecrated."

MacLeod's eyes shifted to Methos. His face was utterly blank, the expression of a consummate predator. His limbs were trembling, but the katana was rock-steady in his hands.

Ever so slowly, Methos lifted the Ivanhoe from his shoulder. The knuckles of the Highlander's hands whitened. Inch by inch, the broadsword slid into its scabbard within the inner lining of the black trench coat. Methos stepped up to Snape and placed his right forefinger on the vial.

Without so much as changing his grip on the katana, MacLeod reached out with his left hand.

Very carefully, McGonagall and Harry both touched the vial. Their eyes were fixed on MacLeod and the bared blade he still held.

Snape activated the emergency portkey. He was braced for the hook that grabbed at his navel and dragged him with gut-wrenching speed. What he was not prepared for was the sword tip that rested against his throat on the other end. He stopped breathing.

McGonagall pulled Harry back out of reach. She looked to Snape for reassurance that he would be all right. Flicking a glance at her, Snape nodded slightly, then stilled as the katana dug a tiny bit more into his skin. McGonagall silently urged Harry out of the room, almost carrying him to the Hospital Wing. The storm-grey eyes followed them out, then returned to Snape.

"Holy ground, Highlander," Methos said softly. He pronounced the words like a promise of water to a parched man. "We are going to holy ground."

The pressure against his skin eased slightly, then disappeared. Snape started to breathe again. He yearned to draw his wand, but held his hands still, exquisitely aware of the naked blade that remained close by. Feral eyes impaled him expectantly; Snape hesitated, reluctant to put the sword at his back. He was urged on by the command held in green-gold irises. As quickly as he could without provoking the hair-trigger jumpiness of the Immortal behind him, by the most isolated route possible, Snape led the way to the Hufflepuff ghost's disused chapel. He thanked Merlin when they reached it without encountering anyone else.

It was spartan inside, but clean. Snape did not fail to notice the immediate release of tension in both his companions as they crossed the entry.

The clatter of metal against stone was shockingly loud in the small room as MacLeod swept past them, the katana slipping from his fingers. He fell to his knees and pressed tight fists into the stone floor. His breathing was ragged; his whole body shook. "Leave me be," he ground out.

Snape blinked, uncomprehending, before he realised the words were spoken in ancient Gaelic.

"MacLeod-" Methos began. He was interrupted.

"The bastard awakened the Kurgan. _Leave me be_."

Methos nodded, grave. "Yes. But remember that he also awakened Ramirez and Nakano, Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod." Taking firm hold of Snape's arm, he backed out of the chapel and closed the door. A gusty sigh hissed through his teeth. "I need a beer." He sounded exhausted, and at the same time pent up with the crawling, buzzing energy of the soul he had eaten.

Snape turned and glared at him. His face was white with blood loss. His eyes rolled up into their sockets and he keeled over.

Methos stared down at the unconscious Potions Master. "Well, damn it."


	10. Chapter 10

Everything was white: the walls, the ceiling, all were white. Harry blinked, languidly, and stared up at the ceiling with the apathy caused by coming out of an induced sleep. Even without the glasses, his eyes could find the cracks and the chipped paint that had become so familiar to him. He was, he calculated, in the third bed from the windows at the end of the hospital wing, and it appeared to be late afternoon. Feeling oddly lethargic, he turned his head to look at the bed beside him. There was little desire in him to move more than that, and many minutes passed before he felt the urge to speak.

"Sir?"

Lying stretched out in the bed beside him, his hair a splash of dark ink across the white linen, Snape flicked him a glance. "Mr Potter."

"Are you alright, sir?" The question was slow and mild, asked without the caution with which Harry would normally approach any inquiry put to the irritable Potions Master. He did not feel so politic, right now, and the genuine concern escaped him without censure.

Snape grimaced, and Harry thought he might retort with sharp words and a lecture on privacy, but all he said was, "I will live."

The green-eyed student's last memories were a nightmare he had no desire to dwell upon, but one thing floated above the determinedly blank surface of Harry's thoughts. "Is he really gone, sir? Is he dead?"

Snape looked at him askance, and he realised that he sounded like a young child. He felt like a child, at that moment, with hope so raw and hurtful, vulnerable to its promise. He did not trust his memory – did not want to remember, to examine its horror too closely – and so he asked for reassurance from the only adult capable of giving it. Snape looked at him and, voice neutral, said, "I am not the one who shares an open connection, Mr Potter."

Harry hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. For the first time in two years, he completely dropped his Occlumency shields. There was an odd sensation of freedom, as if he had taken a breath of fresh air after being confined to a stale closed room, and a strain he had not known he was feeling dropped away.

In the labyrinthine depths of his mind there was silence. No shadow lurked in the sides, no red eyes watched him; there was no resonance in his scar, no alien emotions and mad cackling laughter echoing across his thoughts. For the first time in sixteen years, Harry was alone in his own mind.

"He's gone," the Boy-Who-Lived said in wonder. "He really is gone."

Snape released his breath in an explosive sigh and let his head fall back into his pillow. Open relief was written across his stern face.

"And Professor McGonagall?" Harry asked.

Turning his head, Snape gazed grimly at the curtains partitioning off the bed against the wall. "That remains to be seen."

"What!" Harry sat up, the last vestiges of lethargy burned away by that one ominous reply. "What's wrong? Why won't she be alright?"

Snape regarded him with a tired expression. "She broke Oath, Mr Potter."

"So?"

"There is no crime greater. And worse, she broke it by swearing a conflicting Oath."

He looked like a mutinous teenager, Harry knew, but he could not prevent the sullen tone that escaped. "But the Ministry_–_"

Impatience sharpened Snape's words. "It is not a law of the Ministry, but of magic itself. An Oathtaker's magical core is inextricably bound to their word. It is old magic, perhaps the first true magic. The Oath compels the taker to abide by its terms, even against the taker's natural inclinations. Breaking an Oath is difficult in the extreme, and fatally damaging to the core. There is a reason not even the Dark Lord sought to force anyone to break Oath." Harry was silent, and Snape shook his head in dismay. "Magical Oaths are covered in the seventh year History syllabus."

For an instant, Harry wanted to make a snide remark about Goblin Wars and ghostly professors. The desire passed quickly. "Will she die?"

"No."

Harry's gaze shot to the speaker, even as Snape compressed his lips in grim silence.

Carefully drawing shut the curtains behind him, Methos continued, "Your professor should wake up in a few minutes. And she is in better physical condition than you two, I should think."

The man was calm, his expression seemingly open, his eyes inscrutable to Harry's study. There was nothing about him that suggested the Demon Harry knew him to be, nothing that hinted at the danger he was. It frustrated Harry, to feel no threat despite knowing it existed.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, trying not to sound antagonistic. He must not have succeeded, for Snape shot him a warning look.

Methos raised an eyebrow. "I said I would help Minnie, didn't I? The Clan Oath has been taken care of."

Snape scowled, and it was plain to see that he did not trust the erstwhile Muggle Studies professor. "It is so easy, then, to rescind a blood Oath?" His warning to Harry apparently did not apply to himself.

A light frown played over Methos' face. "Not easy, no," he said. "I wouldn't say that at all. But, you simply have to know how, and be willing to pay the price. Don't fear for Minnie. I haven't done anything but help her."

Harry looked back and forth between them. "If it's so simple, why doesn't everyone do it?"

Glaring at Methos, Snape said, "It should be next to impossible. Beyond that, breaking Oath is . . . anathema. As you respect your Head of House, you will not tell _anyone_, not even your friends or the Headmaster, what she has done. No matter the circumstances, an Oathbreaker is considered the worst criminal in the Wizarding world. Should word of her deed be made known to the public, Professor McGonagall will be shunned and hated more than the Dark Lord himself."

Taken aback by his professor's vehemence, Harry took a moment to respond. There was, of course, only one way to react. He had never cared much for the prejudices of Wizarding society, even before he had experienced its worst capriciousness. "I won't tell," he swore. "Ever."

Snape's glare intensified. Methos shrugged. "I wasn't planning to say anything. I'm quite fond of Minnie."

"And the other one?" Unwilling to give up his cause just yet, Snape held the other man under his glare, for all that Methos did not seem affected.

"I can't speak for the Highlander," Methos replied, running a hand through short dark hair, "but he's always played things close to the chest. I doubt he'll say anything. Which is no more than what you should say."

Harry blinked. He wanted to ask what Methos meant, but he thought he knew. "You ate Voldemort's soul," Harry said, remembering the wraith and the lightning, the scream of ecstasy and pain combined.

"That's one way of putting it," Methos agreed, and Harry felt a cold chill. He had not denied it. He was a Demon, a Dementor in human guise, who ate the souls of men and left behind empty husks. Except, Harry remembered, there had been no Kiss and no mindless body, but blood and swords and heads rolling across the ground. He shuddered away from the memory.

There must have been something in his expression, in his silence, that telegraphed his distress, for Snape sent a strangely protective glance his way. When the dark Potions Master looked back at Methos, his shoulders were set with determination. "What do you want?"

The green-gold gaze turned to Snape, and Harry felt some relief from its intensity. "You will not speak of me," he commanded. The affable expression was gone, replaced with a blank, granite-hard mask that allowed no quarter. Here, then, was a hint of the threat Methos held. "Say whatever you like about what happened, but leave me and the Highlander out of it. Not a hint of our involvement or what you think we might be. We do not want the attention. You will not like what we will do if it is forced on us."

Somehow, Harry had no doubt about that. Likely, it involved swords and more blood. The promise was there, and he knew he should leave well enough alone, but_–_ "There's a prophecy," he blurted.

Methos looked at him.

"I'm supposed to be the only one who can kill him," Harry continued, ignoring Snape's repressive glare.

"Mentioned you by name, did it?" Methos asked.

"Near enough," Harry grumbled, unable to help the edge of resentment the prophecy still brought out in him. He recited it in its entirety, barely registering Snape's shock, and added, "It's why he went after me when I was a baby. It's supposed to be him or me."

Methos looked at him for a long moment, and sighed. "So. There was a prophecy. It worked when you were a kid. Use it now." Seeing Harry about to protest, Methos forestalled him with a raised hand. "Your Voldemort is dead, don't doubt that. But you must realise the prophecy was none too specific. There are thousands of people with the potential to fulfil it, if only Voldemort thought of them as equal." Green-gold eyes darkened. "He thought _me_ equal, more fool him."

"But_–_" Harry hated the resistance in his voice, but he had lived the last two years by the prophecy, and it _had_ been specific, in its way, as much as he hated it.

"Let me tell you something about me, child," Methos interrupted. "I am old. Older than you, older than Voldemort, older than this castle. I may well have been born at the end of the seventh month of whatever calendar my original tribe used; I don't remember. I am Immortal. We do not have parents, not in the usual sense. Marks do not have to be physical, though it was in your case, and I certainly have the power needed. Prophecies often do not mean what you think they mean, and yours is ambiguous at best. I fit the criteria, child."

"And_–_ and the last line?" There was a tremor in his voice; he could not still it.

"I could hazard a guess." Methos did not elaborate.

"What would happen," Snape asked, eyes watchful, "if I were to _Imperio_ you?"

Methos laughed. The genuine amusement he exhibited made Harry flinch, and Snape clenched a fist at his side. "There are far worse things in my head than your Dark Lord. If you should manage to suppress _my_ Quickening_–_" there was an arrogant certainty there that they would not accomplish even that much, "_–_Voldemort is far down the list of who might be awakened. So far down, he will never wake. Strong wizard he might have been, but he was a weak Immortal, barely a babe." His smile turned vicious. "Feel free to try. I'm sure you'll enjoy your encounter with my brothers."

Snape turned ashen and, with deliberate care, forced his hands to relax. Harry spared no thought for the threat.

Somewhere in his soul, something that had been tightening in preparation for death, for _murder_, loosened and broke away. Harry's breath lodged in his throat. If he had had a little more distance to react, he might have felt a flash of anger towards his Headmaster and the narrow interpretation of the prophecy he had taken for granted, but all he could feel was relief. Hot, intense relief that burned away the last of his doubt and healed the bruising of a soul ill prepared for what had been asked of it. Harry felt like laughing, felt like crying. He stared at the youthful face of his Demon saviour, unable to speak.

Methos, for his part, regarded the Boy-Who-Lived with something approaching pity. "Voldemort is dead, child. Let it go."

Harry nodded. Snape looked at him with brows drawn together in concern, and Harry wondered at it. He still could not speak, and instead gave his Potions professor a tremulous smile. The older man blinked.

There was more that might have been said. What, Harry did not know, but he knew that Snape was not yet finished with Methos, nor Methos with them. The opportunity for them to continue was lost, interrupted by soft rustlings behind the curtains. Turning, Methos poked his head through, then parted the curtains so that the others could see.

Professor McGonagall lay in the bed. Her hair had turned to silver and her skin was ghastly pale, the bruise on her head a vivid contrast of blues and purple, but she was awake.

"Professor!" Harry cried, not hiding his relief.

McGonagall blinked, and turned her head to look at him. "Mr Potter," she rasped. "You are well?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"That is good." Her eyes glazed over, and Harry watched her exhaustion with mounting concern.

"Professor? You are alright, aren't you?"

Her lips turned down in a shadow of the frown he was accustomed to. "I shall never raise a wand again," she stated. "My magic is broken. But I will live."

It was somehow horrible that his professors were comparing their state of wellbeing to the alternative of their deaths. Worse, though, was the matter of fact way that McGonagall renounced herself as a witch.

"Then why?" Harry cried. "Why did you_–_? Professor!" He remembered the way he had asked for her to break her Oath, and felt remorse enough to tear him asunder.

"Is it not obvious?" Snape ground out. "She is a Gryffindor."

"I don't understand," Harry said. His eyes stung.

"Think, child!" his Potions professor snapped. The dark eyes were full of anger and regret. "Had she kept her Oath, she would be dead."

"But you said she_–_ she nearly died anyway!"

Methos shook his head. "But what would you have done, had the Highlander killed her?" he asked softly. "What would Severus have done?"

Harry could not have stood by; he knew that, knew that Snape, for all that he was Slytherin, was the same. Neither one could have let McGonagall's death pass without a fight. And against the Scottish Immortal, they would have died.

Minerva McGonagall had become Oathbreaker for them. She had broken her magic, had nearly broken her life, for theirs.

There was a scream of anguish building up in his throat. His professor's magic was not a price he wanted for his life. Not now, not ever.

"You cannot speak, Severus," McGonagall said, her voice a whisper that was nevertheless strong of purpose. "Your heart is as Gryffindor as mine. Did you think I believed you _stumbled_?"

Snape scowled. "Those thorns were bad enough for a full-grown man. What do you think they would have done to a cat?"

"They lost you blood enough that you should not be alive."

"It was nothing a replenishing potion could not replace." Snape's tone was sharp and defensive, and it was all Harry could do to keep the hysterical laughter in, because the tears at the sacrifices bandied about between the two burned in his eyes before they fell.

Looking at him, McGonagall's expression softened. "Do not fret, Mr Potter," she said. "I am alive, and that is more than I expected after a confrontation with the Dark Lord and the Demon of the MacLeods both. The first is dead, and the latter will not hunt my niece. My magic is little enough price to pay. It was my choice, and I am content." Her smile was gentle, and Harry could not help but smile back as she drifted into sleep.

Methos closed the curtains and turned back to them. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it with an irritated look. There was a clamour at the doors, and Harry's smile became full-blown. The whirlwind that swept into the room was comprised of two Gryffindors, and Harry was so caught up in his friends and the barrage of questions sent his way that he barely noticed Methos stepping into an unobtrusive corner. There was not a moment of silence until he let slip Voldemort's demise.

Hermione gasped, and Ron stood with a stricken expression. Biting her lip, the bushy-haired girl said, "Did you_–_?"

Harry shook his head. "No. But something happened, and he's_–_ he's gone. For good."

Ron let out his breath in a _whoosh_ of air. "I'm glad, mate," Ron said simply, and Harry, looking at his longtime friend, saw the concern and relief that were solely for him.

"Me too," he admitted.

"Harry," Hermione began with an odd note in her voice, "are you sure you're not hurt?"

Following her gaze to the hand on his shoulder and the odd, uncomfortable looking position of his arm resting upon the sheets, Harry said, surprised, "I still can't feel anything."

That sparked another clamour amongst his friends, this one loud enough to draw Madam Pomfrey from her office. He sat underneath her diagnostic spells, privately wondering that he felt so little rancour at the numbness still spread through his limbs. At last, the Mediwitch drew back with a stern expression and pursed lips.

"Well, Mr Potter," she said. "That's a dark curse, and no mistake. I had hoped the effects would disappear by themselves. As it is_–_" she frowned. "I would love to get my hands on the person responsible. I'm sorry, Mr Potter. I cannot cure this."

The stunned silence was broken by Hermione. "Please, Madam Pomfrey, what's wrong with him?"

The Mediwitch sighed. "It's an induced version of Gehazi's Sin, Miss Granger, a Wizarding form of leprosy. Mr Potter has lost all sense of touch in his body. The natural disease is extraordinarily contagious; we can be thankful that the curse only duplicates the effects, and not the disease itself. It's very rare; a case has not been seen for almost two thousand years. Whatever cure there may have been has been lost."

Stricken, Hermione's eyes glistened with tears. "But if it's so old, who would know such a dark curse? Can't we do _any_thing?"

Without intent, Harry's gaze drifted over to Snape. The man was staring straight ahead, looking at no one, dark eyes hooded. Content to let Hermione and Madam Pomfrey discuss the curse between themselves, Harry would not have said anything, but Ron followed his gaze.

"You!" the redhead cried out, his voice choked. "But you_–_! Why? How could you_–_ to _Harry_!" He started around the bed towards the man, who sat up and warily watched him approach.

"It's alright, Ron." Harry reached out with one arm. He did not feel the impact, but Ron stopped instantly, looking almost as if he was afraid he had broken something in Harry by touching him.

The Gryffindor prefect was flushed dark red. "Harry, it's _permanent_. The git cursed you! He_–_" Unable to express his anger, Ron stood there clenching and unclenching his fist.

"It's _alright_, Ron," Harry repeated. Looking around at the unforgiving expressions on his friends' faces, and even Pomfrey's dark countenance, he sighed. "I was about to be tortured to death," he explained reluctantly. "They'd already started. The curse was a mercy, really. I didn't expect to survive. Professor Snape couldn't have done anything better for me."

Ron paled, his anger crumbling away in the face of that admission. He stood there, speechless, uncertain. Hermione breathed, "Oh, Harry," and reached out to hug him gently.

Over the top of her head, Harry glanced at Snape, and caught the surprise in the dark eyes before his professor looked away. He wondered if the man had expected him to spout heated recriminations, and after a moment's thought ruefully concluded that, yes, he had. And Harry couldn't blame him. "Really, it's alright," Harry said with a lightness he didn't need to feign. "Voldemort's dead. This is nothing."

Shaking her head, Pomfrey said, "I hope you will feel that way when you are learning how to walk again, Mr Potter." Her anger was not reduced, but it was aimed now at the curse itself, and not at Snape.

"If I may interrupt," a soft voice interjected, and Harry flinched as Methos stepped forward, having forgotten the man was there. "There is a cure. You won't like it," he warned.

Pomfrey opened her mouth to speak, but Hermione overrode her. "What is it? How do you know it? If it can help Harry_–_"

Switching his gaze to her, Methos smiled. "I _am_ a historian. Miss Granger, what do you know of leprosy?"

The smartest student in Hogwarts frowned. "Nothing about the Wizard version. But for Muggles, it, uh, causes skin lesions and damages the peripheral nervous system, causing loss of sensation. It's caused by_–_"

Methos held up his hand, and Hermione stopped. "The cause is different," he said. Like Snape, he had the habit of adopting his lecturing voice when giving an explanation. "The damage to the peripheral nervous system is essentially the same. In the circumstance here, it is the only thing we need worry about. Now, what spell do you know that works by stimulating nerve endings?"

The answer this time came from Pomfrey, who looked utterly outraged. "No. _No_! Professor Green, you will not cast an Unforgivable on my patient!"

Methos shrugged. "Give a surgeon a scalpel, and he can hurt or heal. Cast correctly, the Cruciatus may be used to regrow the damaged nerves. It's dangerous and painful, but possible. I said you wouldn't like it." Seeing the dubious faces surrounding him, he elaborated, "The Cruciatus was developed by a healer some two thousand years ago, someplace near Jerusalem. The name was not meant as a description, but as a warning. It's a perfectly workable cure that has fallen out of practice with the demise of Gehazi's line."

"But_–_ you can't mean that!" Hermione was staring at Methos in shock. "That's_–_ that's wrong!"

"Hermione?" Ron asked.

"It's the Bible," Hermione whispered, face pale. "He's talking about the Bible! You can't mean that He _Crucio_-ed his followers into health!"

Again, there was a link between the millennia old book and the Immortal. Harry privately decided that he would not ask Hermione about the passage Voldemort had quoted as he had originally intended. It was potentially dangerous knowledge; she was smart enough to connect the two, and he did not want to see Methos make good on his threat.

Meanwhile, Methos had shaken his head. "There were other healers," he said, though his eyes twinkled mischievously.

Hermione just frowned and looked away.

Clearing her throat, Madam Pomfrey said, "Be that as it may, I cannot allow you to cast an Unforgivable on my patient."

"Your choice." Methos shrugged, clearly unconcerned. "Feel free to research another cure, but it's the only one I know."

Glancing at Snape, Harry made a decision. Despite what he had said earlier, he preferred to have a cure for the curse. Perhaps he should not trust the ancient Immortal, but Harry believed him when he said that he did not know another cure. If the man who had lived through the times said it would work, Harry wanted to try it. He told the others.

"Are you going to trust him to cast it?" Ron asked, glaring at Methos. "For all we know, he just wants a shot at the Boy-Who-Lived!"

"Me?" Methos raised an eyebrow. "I'm afraid I couldn't, even if I wanted to. I'm a Squib, you see."

Harry choked back wild laughter.

"I will," Snape announced abruptly.

Wringing her hands, Madam Pomfrey paced back and forth. "I am the mediwitch. I should_–_"

"No, Poppy," Snape interrupted in what, for him, was a gentle tone. "You do not have the experience or the disposition required." Then he looked askance at Harry's friends, who had not said anything. "No objections from Mr Potter's protectors?" he asked snidely.

Hermione merely shook her head.

"You know what you're doing," was all Ron said. Even Madam Pomfrey looked at him in surprise at that. "Well, you do!" Ron exclaimed, an embarrassed flush spreading out from his cheeks. "And you might be a git, and you don't like Harry at all, but you'd do your best to help him."

Snape stared at Ron, black eyes unreadable. "Thankyou, Mr Weasley, for that recommendation of my character." Then he turned to Pomfrey, business-like again. "My wand, if you please."

Stepping forward until he stood between the two beds, Methos instructed Snape, "You must focus on regrowing the nerves, not on the pain it will cause. He will scream, and you must hold the spell for a full five minutes after he starts, or the damage will rebound. At no time can you lose your concentration, or you will cause more damage."

"This cure is documented?" Pomfrey asked doubtfully.

"Oh, yes. It's written quite clearly in a book I found in the old country." He said something else in a language the others did not know.

Snape blanched, then nodded. Harry looked at him curiously, and the dark eyes met his own with the light whisper of Legilimency as Snape imparted what the other had said. The book was one of Methos' own diaries. It was one thing to guess that, and another to hear it from the Immortal; Harry paled.

"Do you think you can do it?" Methos inquired.

"Yes," Snape answered tersely. "Mr Potter?"

Harry took a deep breath. "I'm ready." He wasn't, not truly, and could not conceive how someone could prepare for such an extended period under the Cruciatus. Perhaps the icy numbness helped; it was hard to imagine any sensation when he was so detached from his body. Looking around, he added, "You might want to put up some Silencing charms, professor."

Grimacing, Snape did as suggested. The others looked on, Madam Pomfrey in concern, Methos in dispassionate interest, and Ron and Hermione in worry and support. Snape faced Harry fully.

"_Crucio_."

At first he did not feel anything, let alone the pain he normally associated with the Unforgivable curse. The tingling that began in the extremities of his fingers was not unpleasant to start, though it quickly grew to uncomfortable levels as it spread to cover his entire body. The needling that wracked him felt as if blood were rushing to all the areas of his body at once, and he writhed as he tried to find a position of least discomfort.

Then the first stabbing pain hit, and Harry screamed.

It was unbearable; fire raced through his body, burning him from the inside out, sending chills crashing like waves over his skin. Electricity cascaded from fingers to toes to the tips of his hair, a million times more powerful than the time he had poked a nail into the power socket at the Dursley's. The air was acid in his lungs, stinging in his eyes. His entire skin itched with the crawling of thousands of biting insects; he scratched with ragged fingernails, hard enough to draw blood, in an attempt to get them off. The slightest touch of the bed and the sheets and the hands trying to hold him still were unbearable crushing weights. The beat of his heart was thunder in his ears, great throbbing pressure against his chest.

When his vision darkened and his hearing dimmed, when air could no more be forced through a throat choked with screams and every newly regrown nerve in his body was overloaded with sensation, the pain stopped. Harry sucked in great gulps of air, nearly insensate with relief, as his muscles shuddered and twitched in reaction.

Finally, after a moment that could have been years to his skewed senses, Harry opened his eyes. Madam Pomfrey was busy casting spells on him, her stern face etched in steel. Hermione and Ron were in tears, lying on top of him as they gripped his arms. Even Snape looked ill as he rested against the headboard of his bed. His wand lay abandoned beside lax fingers.

Harry opened his mouth, coughed, and tried again. "Are you alright, Professor?" he asked, disliking the drawn features of the older man.

Snape's mouth twisted with exasperation and disgust. "Should I not be asking you that, Mr Potter?" he snapped, causing his student to blush.

Flexing his fingers and wincing as the motion pulled at the scratches running down his arms, Harry observed, "I can feel pain again. Does that count?"

Almost as one, the people around his bed growled. Pomfrey was the loudest by far. "Of all the_–_! Mr Potter! Kindly take a less cavalier approach to your health!" She cast a few more spells, and said in a calmer voice, "Well, Mr Potter. It appears to have worked. You will be over-sensitive for some days before your body has stabilised. Do not exert yourself."

Emerald eyes sought a gold-tainted green gaze, and Harry found Methos slouching against the wall. The Immortal gave a half-nod in acknowledgement and ambled out of the hospital wing.

It was a long time before Madam Pomfrey was satisfied enough to let her charge alone. His friends, after many assurances of his health and a good dose of chocolate, also left when he mentioned he was tired. It was not a lie, but in the quiet of the hospital wing he found he could not sleep, though his wildly swinging emotions had left him exhausted. "Professor?"

Snape turned to him, face clear of any impatience. Harry wondered how long this forbearance would last. "Yes, Mr Potter?"

"Who are his brothers?"

Sighing, Snape looked away. "Muggles are not the only ones who kept legends of the Horsemen. They were Demons, true Demons. I will not speak of them here." His expression was closed, and Harry knew he would receive no more information from him.

"Why did he do it? He didn't have to tell us how to counteract the curse."

The dark gaze turned contemplative. "Currency, Mr Potter. He has shown us that he is a dangerous enemy. He is now showing us that he can be a valuable ally. The more he does for us, the more we will owe him. And that . . . is unwise."

Thinking it over, Harry asked, "You think he'll make us do something for him?"

Snape shook his head. "He has named his price. I suggest you begin thinking of a plausible story for the Dark Lord's demise. It should not be hard for one with your experience."

"It doesn't seem like much," Harry said softly.

"Not much?" Snape echoed. "What price fame? You have made your distaste eminently clear, and you will be Lockhart."

Harry blanched then as the full implications of his situation occurred to him. For if Methos were taken out of the equation, the only one left to take the claim of Voldemort's fall was the Boy-Who-Lived. It was a lie; it would always be a lie to everyone but the few who already knew, and Harry would again be the public hero for a deed he had not accomplished. With resolve and maturity far greater than his years, he began editing the events in his mind. He was not Lockhart. He could never be Lockhart, but he would play the role, however much he detested it. It was a price he would pay, willingly, for his life and the lives of his two professors.


	11. Chapter 11

The Headmaster's entrance was neither quiet nor discrete. Woken from a fitful sleep, Harry smiled blearily at the flurry of bright robes and pale hair, the old wizard's magic crackling, formless, in the air.

"My dear boys!" Albus Dumbledore exclaimed, coming to a stop between the two beds. Snape inclined his head in greeting, and Dumbledore turned to Harry. "My boy," he said again. There was no twinkle in his eye, only worry and concern. "I have come just now from a most disturbing meeting with the Minister. It seems that the wards around Voldemort's headquarters dropped yesterday. The Aurors apparated in to find him dead, along with his greatest supporters."

"So naturally you came straight here," Snape remarked, but there was a light in his eyes, and a rare smile touched his lips.

A slow answering twinkle grew in Dumbledore's blue irises as he realised that his charges were not greatly harmed. "But of course. Whenever there has been great excitement, I need only visit the hospital wing to find the culprits."

Harry grinned. "I'm glad you're back, Headmaster," he said.

"As am I," Dumbledore replied, turning grave. "I am sorry, my boy, that I was not here when you had need of me. Will you tell me what has happened? The Aurors' information was greatly lacking. They found only the bodies; any magical traces once there were wiped away by a powerful burst of raw magic."

Sighing, Harry ran a hand through messy dark hair, glad that he could feel the strands in his fingers. "It was my fault, Headmaster. I was careless and got caught by Lucius Malfoy. Voldemort, he– he wanted to sacrifice me to summon a Demon."

"The blood-binding potion, Albus," Snape spoke up. "The Dark Lord performed a Ritual of Summoning."

For an instant, Dumbledore's magic suffocated the room in a blazing fury before he gathered it back under control. "My dear boys," he said, at a loss for words.

"Voldemort wanted to make an alliance," Harry continued, rushing the words as the full memory of his terror came back to him. "But he must have done something wrong, because the Demon, it– it wouldn't take me. It killed them instead, all of them. A–and, it– it ate Voldemort's soul." He swallowed back bile, seeing again the dark wraith and the blue lightning, hearing that terrible cry.

"Oh, my boy." The twinkle was gone entirely.

"Minerva and I were with Potter when he was captured," Snape said, taking up the tale when it was obvious Harry could not yet continue. "I was summoned by the Dark Lord, and Minerva had been injured. She followed in her Animagus form. I was . . . incapacitated. When the Demon had finished with the others, it turned to us, and Minerva confronted it."

"And it did not kill you?" Dumbledore asked, not in suspicion, but genuine gladness.

Snape shook his head. "Potter asked it not to. It was amused, I think, and left us alone. But it destroyed Minerva's magic."

"Poppy has told me of Minerva's injuries," the Headmaster said gravely. "She did not know how it was possible, but now . . ." He looked very old, at that moment. "What happened to the Demon?"

"It left," Harry replied. "I– I think it went back to where it came from."

They remained in silence. The curtains were drawn about McGonagall's bed, and Dumbledore stared at them as if he could see through to the woman sleeping beyond. At last he stirred, and bright cerulean eyes turned back to them. "I am so very glad, my boys, that you survived," he told them, and Harry felt the warmth in the words flow through his heart. "And I am so very sorry that I left you to face such an encounter alone, though I think that the outcome would have been worse had I been there, for I could not face a Demon without a costly battle.

"I did not wish such a fate on you."

The last was directed at Harry, and he answered accordingly, "It wasn't me, sir. The Demon killed Voldemort."

"The Demon chose you over Voldemort," Dumbledore corrected gently. "It is a great and subtle power that can turn aside a Demon, and very few are the souls who have it."

"What power?" Harry asked despite himself.

"The same power that saved you as a baby," Dumbledore replied, the twinkle returning to his eyes. "It is the greatest power of all."

"Love," Harry said doubtfully.

"Pure love. Do not doubt it, Harry. The power of love is real and true."

Harry said nothing, but he doubted it indeed. Dispassionate green-gold eyes haunted his memory, eyes that were calculating and cold and could deal death without blinking, and he had seen nothing in them that could be moved by anything so formless as emotion. Those terrible, vivid eyes floated before him, and Harry jumped as he realised that they did not exist in memory alone.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," Methos said, and Harry blinked, unable to focus on the menace he knew existed when the man stood mild and genial at the foot of his bed.

"Ah, Professor Green!" Dumbledore greeted merrily. "You are not here for Poppy's care, I hope?"

"No, Headmaster." Methos offered him a shy smile. "It's just that I was the one who found Sev passed out right there in the passageway – didn't they tell you? – and I wanted to see how he's doing. There's all sorts of rumours going around. Terribly exciting, don't you think?"

"Indeed, yes." The Headmaster's smile was beatific. "Rumours are often more exciting than the event itself. But I understood you were leaving us."

Methos pulled a rueful face. "Yes, Headmaster," he replied. "Until the reason for my family emergency appeared right on your doorstep. I must still leave soon, however."

"This has something to do with the man in the chapel, of course?" Dumbledore said, his voice questioning though his smile implied certain knowledge. "Poor Friar Stephan says the man has locked himself in and will not allow anyone else near."

The flash of calculation in Methos' eyes passed so quickly that Harry nearly missed it. "Yes, as it happens. The man is a Squib, you see, the cousin of a close friend. He experienced a large trauma recently and wanted to spend some time in solitary prayer. I'm afraid he can be abrasive at the best of times; he means no ill to the good Father by it. I sent a message to my friend; he'll be out of your hair shortly."

"Good, good," Dumbledore murmured. "I must be off. There is much to do, very much, and it must be done as soon as possible. I have barred the press from entering Hogwarts, Harry, and the Ministry has agreed to wait until you are fully recovered before speaking to you. It is kind of you to keep Severus company, Adam."

Methos stared after his departed back with a disgruntled frown. "That man sees far too much," he muttered.

Harry was quiet, but Methos turned to him as if he had spoken out loud.

"He is right, you know," the ancient Immortal said.

"I conquered you with love?" Harry shot back bitterly. Methos raised a reproving eyebrow, and he subsided, darting a quick glance at the doors to reassure himself that he had not been overheard.

"In a way," Methos replied. "It is nothing so obvious as a sword, but it is a powerful motivator in its own right. I won't explain it to you; you can figure it out later." He chuckled then, mirthfully. "Our dear, too knowing Headmaster is hindered by the limitations of the language. What he said only sounds trite in modern English. Learn to speak a more romantic language, and you'll understand better."

Snape made a disgusted sound.

Delighted laughter filled the hospital wing. "You _are_ feeling better! You'll be arguing with me soon enough." Methos ambled away, whistling a cheerful tune.

"I don't understand him," Harry complained.

"He does not want us to understand him," Snape growled. "He is moving five steps ahead, this way and that, to keep us off balance. Slytherin's teacher, indeed."

For the next four days, enough visitors came to see the three of them that the hospital wing seemed a main thoroughfare and Madam Pomfrey was ready to evict them herself. She had not let them leave earlier, though she seemed glad enough to be rid of them when their scheduled repose was at an end.

McGonagall had healed days ago, and spent the rest of her enforced stay proving that Snape was not the worst patient to grace the hospital wing's beds. She was not impolite in the least, but she had her duties as Deputy Headmistress and Transfigurations professor, and she did not let up on them, even to allow for the loss of her magic. Forced to abandon teaching her own classes, she kept a steady stream of messages and paperwork flowing through the door. The enchanted papers made way for no one, stretching the patience of the poor mediwitch.

For all his irascibility, Snape seemed content to remain relatively idle, sifting through a veritable tower of research notes. Carried still by the euphoria left in the wake of Voldemort's downfall, for the first time in his tenure he did not feel needlessly aggravated by whatever student crossed his path. His newfound tolerance was a great boon to Harry, who had a constant stream of visitors to his bedside.

His most faithful companions were, of course, the remaining part of the Golden Trio; Ron kept him occupied with games, and Hermione with missed coursework. Frequently they were joined by Ginny and other sixth and seventh year Gryffindors, and less often by other members of the former DA, though the presence of Snape nearby put a damper on the other students' exuberance.

Perhaps the most perplexing of Harry's visitors, aside from Methos' occasional appearances, was Draco Malfoy. He came in one day when no other person was about, pale faced and dry eyed. His fine-boned features were smoothed into a mask at once both like and very unlike his father. Ignoring McGonagall's irritable frown – he had interrupted her perusal of the next semester's timetabling – and Snape's warning glare, he came to stand next to Harry.

"Potter," he said eventually.

"Malfoy," Harry returned, striving to achieve the same neutral tone.

"My father is dead."

"Yes." When Draco Malfoy said nothing else, and unsure how to take his expression, Harry said, cautiously, "He died fighting."

Malfoy nodded. The youth in front of Harry was a far cry from the eleven year old boy who had sneered and boasted; he stood, straight-backed, slender, self-assured, and gave little away. The line of his shoulders loosened slightly, and though the pale grey eyes showed no reaction, Harry thought he seemed more at ease.

"You're still a git, Potter," Malfoy said, and left.

Harry looked at Snape, completely baffled, but the Slytherin Head of House's expression was impenetrable.

And so it was that four days passed, and three more, before another of the immortal, sword-wielding Demons arrived.

* * *

The tall man in Muggle clothing who ambled through the Hogwarts grounds drew second glances from the student population, and third and fourth glances from the female portion. He was handsome, clearly well muscled beneath the long black coat, with olive skin and dark hair. Warm brown eyes met each gaze that dared his, aware but politely ignorant of the giggles and blushes that followed him. More than anything else, though, he had _presence_. The man was impossible to ignore.

It was Ron Weasley who brought attention of this wandering stranger to the staff, who had let recent events take precedence over normal school operations. The prefect remarked in passing that there were entirely too many people with trench coats these days, causing Professor McGonagall to hurry her steps in search of the stranger. She found him holding a polite and exceedingly strange conversation with Sir Nicholas on the field tactics of Headless Polo.

"May I help you?" she asked, more sharply that was usually warranted by a visitor to the school. Sir Nicholas took his leave and drifted down the hall.

The man turned to her. His gaze flicked over her, assessing, before he smiled. The expression was entirely too practiced and charming to put her at ease. "I believe so," he replied, the Scottish burr in his voice deeply musical. "I'm afraid there was no one at the gates, so I came in. I'm looking for a friend of mine – Adam Green."

She twitched at that, her hand moving an inch towards the habitual resting pocket of her wand. His eyes hardened and his stance subtly shifted into a defensive posture. His smile remained pleasant, however, and he did not move further until she had her instinctual actions under control. McGonagall opened her mouth to speak, but before she could his head came up, and he looked up and down the hall. His shoulders tensed in a way that told her he was prepared for a fight. A moment later the faint echo of hurrying footsteps reached her.

"Mac! You made it." The pleasure and relief in Methos' voice was hard to miss.

The tension flowed and solidified into something else in the visitor. "Adam," he greeted. "I got your message." His voice deepened, becoming something darker than it had been while talking to McGonagall.

"So I see. You didn't have any trouble finding the place, I hope?" A hint of uncertainty coloured his tone.

"Not as much as you'd think."

"Ah." Looking even more uncertain, Methos evidently decided to leave well enough alone. He began walking; the others moved to keep up. "I don't think you've been introduced to my lovely colleague. Minnie, this is Duncan MacLeod." She paled at that, though she had already guessed his identity. "Mac, meet Minerva–"

"McGonagall. I know," the younger Highlander interrupted. He sounded angry. "I recognise the tartan. And you brought Connor _here_?"

"It really is the safest place."

"I'm sure." Duncan levelled a doubtful gaze on McGonagall.

She pushed her shoulders back. Decades of teaching rambunctious teenagers came to her aid as she said, "I have no intention of harming Connor MacLeod."

"Forgive me if I don't take you at your word while you carry that claymore. Adam, explain now. _What_ are Connor and I doing here?" The dark gaze that swept over Methos was fraught with danger and doubt.

Methos winced. "Minnie? That's a good point. Why do you still have it?"

She glared at them both. "Mr Green, Mr MacLeod. No doubt you may both overshadow any attempt of mine to fence. As it happens, I will not part with it until that part of my Oath is fulfilled. The sword is needed. It has been made eminently clear to me that its destruction is paramount. Therefore I will not let it out of my sight until Connor MacLeod can witness the act for himself."

"There you are." Methos turned to Duncan with a bright, disarming smile. "That's why we're here."

Duncan sighed. "Explanations any time today, Adam."

"Oh, your kinsman and I were having a grand old time. We ran into each other – quite unplanned, I assure you – he got himself kidnapped, I came to the rescue, we killed a bothersome dark wizard, and Connor got his Quickening scrambled. There's only one of us he trusts enough to help him, so I called you. That's all there is to it, really."

Duncan was silent for a long moment, thinking that over. "And Ms McGonagall?"

Methos glanced at him curiously. "How much do you know about Connor's grudge with the McGonagalls?"

"Not much," he admitted. "Connor always told me that I should never trust a McGonagall. In fact, he said I should always go the other way when I meet one.

"I've seen them from time to time," Duncan MacLeod continued. "The most recent was a little over a year ago. He caught up with me in Paris and started following me. At first I thought he was a Watcher. Joe denied it, naturally. Then I saw the sword and decided he was a leftover from the Hunters. It wasn't until I watched him breaking into my Seacouver apartment with a stick that I knew him for a wizard. I bumped into him the next day and let him have a close up view. I must not have been who he was looking for, because he was gone after that."

McGonagall closed her eyes briefly. _Ah, Meriadoc_. He had never stood a chance, not against such foes as these. As dedicated a member of the Order of the Phoenix as he had been, veteran of the first war against Voldemort, these opponents had played a deadlier Game for centuries. He had been seen and marked a year prior to the day he had made his move against the Demon, and yet they did nothing. Had done nothing, until he attacked. The Clan Oath had taken his life.

"He was my brother," she said through stiff lips.

Duncan's expression softened. "My condolences for your loss."

"It is done with," McGonagall said. Done and done, if she had her way. She would not allow her nieces, her heirs, to join the long line of McGonagall chieftains who had fallen to the Demon of the MacLeods.

Duncan nodded. He was silent until Methos had taken them to the chapel's door. When he did speak, his voice was filled with shadows and nuances, depths that McGonagall did not know. "Why did you call me, Adam? I haven't seen you for months, and then you send for me, with an owl, no less. Why?"

Methos flinched. He looked away from the other man, regret darkening green-gold irises. "I'm sorry, Mac."

"Where have you been?"

"Here." Methos shifted uncomfortably, unable to meet the accusation held in brown eyes. "Look, I'm sorry I left when I did, okay? I had to. I'm glad you won."

Duncan did not accept his apology. McGonagall would not have, either, and she did not know what they were talking about. She did not want to know. Anything to do with these men, these Demons, was entrenched in blood and death. Beneath lowered brows, Duncan glowered at Methos. "Why call me now?"

Methos opened his mouth, sighed, and closed it. Then he said, "You hate me now. But you'd take my head in an instant if I knew your kinsman needed you and I didn't tell you. I _am_ sorry, Mac." He walked away, leaving MacLeod to glare at his back.

At last, the younger Highlander turned to her. She met his gaze squarely. "Ms McGonagall."

"Mr MacLeod." A moment of indecision passed, and she said, "Please do not disturb the students. Call a house-elf if you wish to speak with me." She left him at the chapel, and had not yet turned the corner before she heard the heavy wooden door open, and close.

What happened behind closed chapel doors, she did not know, but the two MacLeods did not emerge for days, missing entirely the circus of reporters and Ministry officials that briefly flooded the school. Connor, when he appeared, was calmer than she had ever seen him, the strange feral light she remembered so well banished from storm-scudded eyes. Duncan stood beside him, a large brooding shadow that was the very image of a guardian warrior. They met her in a disused classroom, the Claymore at her hip and Severus Snape at her side.

"McGonagall," Connor said. His silky, dangerous voice was just short of a snarl, but there was no malice there, only wariness.

"Demon," the broken witch replied.

Connor's eyes narrowed, and Duncan scowled.

"You will keep your word," said McGonagall.

The shaggy blond hair flipped down and up in a short nod.

"And I will keep mine." With great care, she set the Claymore on the ground. It lay there, cold, bright blade gleaming, a relic of a past best forgotten. The keen metal glowed under the heat of Snape's spell, melting into a formless lump surrounding the pommel stone like a poisonous egg broken upon the flagstones. In one blink of an eye it vanished in the focus of the Potion Master's Banishment, leaving an afterimage that, too, disappeared.

"It's done," Connor said, and McGonagall thought she heard a hint of relief in the quiet words.

"Why?" asked McGonagall with all the strength of her Gryffindor courage. "Why do this?" Unspoken was the intent of her question: why hadn't he killed her as he had the other McGonagall chieftains?

Connor MacLeod looked at her, and in that haunted boyish face she saw a life led long and hard beyond mortal endurance. She did not think he would answer, but he touched quick, slender fingers to the dragon hilt peeking from his coat, and said, "Your dark pisser woke an evil murdering bastard in me. I won't do anything if I'm not sure it's me doing it."

And that answer was enough. They parted ways then, with no more words to be said and a shared desire to leave the other well alone. Snape followed them to make sure they left with Methos as was their stated intent, and as they turned the corner, McGonagall heard Duncan's rolling voice.

"You never told me."

"Told you what?" came Connor's irritable reply. "That the headhunters I fought off when you were my student left me with a bunch of damned persistent stalkers? What difference would it have made? You'd only feel guilty."

The mild argument faded into the distance, and Professor McGonagall turned in the other direction. Her magic was gone, and when things had settled down again, she would not be able to teach her classes. She did not know what she would do then, but she had her life, and the futures of her nieces, and that was a good trade. In the meantime, though, she had a school to help run, and a House to manage.

* * *

The three men walked to the great doors, Duncan in the middle, Methos and Connor on either side. There was a certain step, the way they strode in unison, long coats flaring about their legs, that made the three disparate men seem kin, warriors of a forgotten past.

"Wait!" Harry cried, and they paused, as one, and turned. He did not like Methos, who was too close to the things that Harry fought, too deadly, and he did not know Duncan, but Connor had saved his life and spared his professors. And so he fixed his eyes on the shortest and scruffiest Immortal, and did not look away. "I have to ask. Am I_–_ can you_–_ are we the same?"

The awkward question whispered and faded in the air. Storm grey eyes watched him, pinning him still with their intensity. "Why do you ask?"

"I survived the Killing Curse," Harry explained simply, and endured the scrutiny of ancient eyes in youthful faces.

"No," Connor replied at last, the silky texture of mixed accents sliding and settling like balm over his nerves. "Whatever saved you, it wasn't the same. You're not one of us."

"Oh." The relief was fast and soothing; he didn't want to be Immortal and watch his friends die, didn't want to be a Demon. It was bittersweet joy to know that his mother was his mother, and had not sacrificed herself in vain.

The doors opened; rain-scented autumn air swept through the Entrance Hall, bringing with it the taste of laden stormclouds and fresh winds from beyond the portal. Long coats flared, the soaring wings of creatures of legend, and the drifting spray settled, shining, on the tiles; then the doors closed. The clatter of many feet echoed in the castle, a rising tide of chatter as students flowed to the Great Hall.

"What will you do now, Mr Potter?" Snape asked, a solitary raven facing the castle doors.

"Do?"

"You are free."

Free of prophecy, free of Voldemort. Free to have the childhood he had never had. Blinking, Harry looked around. The glimmer of moon-pale hair swaying in a sea of faces caught him. He thought of Shattered Gods and swords and lightning, and called out, "Hey, Luna. You still hunting Crumple-Horned Snorkacks this summer?"

"Yes, Harry," came the answer, floating over Snape's huff of disbelief.

"Can I come too?" asked Harry, and his laughter rose to the ceiling, clear and weightless and full of joy.


End file.
